by A P Bateman
“Please…”
“I’m not going to kill you.” King paused. “Not unless you give me good reason to. Can you get that safe open?”
Flymo shook his head. “I don’t have a key for that.”
“What’s inside?”
“Money.”
“A lot?”
“And then some.”
“From the Albanians?”
He nodded. “And the Russians, too. We’ve hit them all over. Albania, Kosovo, Bulgaria and in Russia.”
“You’ve been busy.”
“Too busy,” said Flymo quietly, as he opened the lock and unfolded one of the doors. “They must have been ready for them. Either that, or their luck simply ran out.”
“Where?”
“The Greece border with Albania. They were doing a recon. It was too far for the chopper to drop them in. I had tasks to do, get more fuel for the chopper and do some maintenance on it. I haven’t heard from them since.”
“Shit.”
“Exactly.” He paused. “I took the chopper up, stopped at a couple of airfields along the way to refuel, then flew a few circuits of the area. Damned if somebody didn’t take a few shots at me. When I got back, I noticed three bullet holes in the canopy near the base of the rotor. I think they must have been aiming for the Jesus nut.”
“The Jesus nut?”
Flymo nodded. “Only one damned nut holds the rotor in place with the rotor mast. We have to put our faith in Jesus for keeping the thing together.”
King smiled at the thought. “So, what was your contingency plan?”
“You know? I don’t think it ever came up. We’d been hitting the Albanians all summer, making it look like Russian involvement. We’d done the same in Russia a couple of times, too. We’ve cost them hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue, closer to a billion if you factor in the structural and resource and logistical damage we’ve done.” Flymo paused. “I took the bird up again, but this time the first airfield wouldn’t allow me to refuel. I know when somebody’s been gotten to, and the airfield manager definitely had a lot of pressure piled on him. He came up with some bullshit story to stop me taking off, I soon realised he’d made a call to the same people who had put the pressure on him. I got the hell out of there before anybody came to meet me. Got back here on fumes alone.”
“Where were they when they went dark?”
“They were scoping out a place the Albanians use as a rear echelon base. Any problems and they bolt into Greece or Macedonia. It’s an old chateau style building. Used to be a vineyard before the Commies drank all the wine and forgot to look after the grape vines.”
“Sounds like we need to get in there and take a look.”
“Well, we can’t take the bird because it’s too far. And besides, we’re just two men,” Flymo shook his head. “I’m not sure if it was campfire bollocks or whether Rashid just liked a good yarn, but he mentioned you a lot. Not classified shit, or anything like that. No operational history. But just how many times you’ve beaten the odds, got the job done. When we all voiced how some of the tasks that we were up against were simply too stacked in the enemy’s favour, he would drag out another anecdote about you.”
King shifted awkwardly. “Did he say he’d saved my arse more times than I care to remember?” He paused. “Certainly, more times than I’ve saved his.”
“No.”
King thought about how things had become strained between them. How his actions had cost Rashid personal loss. But the man had been there for him again when it mattered. He thought about Caroline and the fact he’d most likely still be in rural Cornwall had it been anybody else but Rashid who had gone missing. He owed the man, and that was that. They had argued and Caroline had given King an ultimatum. And yet, King was here. If he succeeded, he did not yet know what would happen between them. He had tried not to think about failure.
“How much money is in that safe?”
“No idea. MI5 funded us the travel expenses and a few grand to get us started but that was it. Nothing like the budget we needed for payoffs, bribes and expenditure.”
“Sounds about right,” King agreed. Operations like this made criminals out of patriots.
“We took enough out of the money we liberated for the vehicles, working capital and the helicopter, of course.” Flymo paused, still looking at the gun in King’s hand. “The chopper has kept the Albanians behind us. We can strike and retract before they know what has happened.”
“Shoot ‘n skoot.”
“Exactly.”
“How much fuel do you have? In airtime, that is.”
Flymo shrugged. “Three hundred miles to a tank with a thirty-minute reserve, I guess we’ve got enough fuel now for seven refuels.”
“So, you’re pretty much tied to operating in about a one-hundred-and-fifty-mile radius from here. Say, one-forty allowing for take-off, landing and some low-level evasive action.”
“I reckon.”
“You must have exhausted what can be done here.”
“We had. Hence the recon on the mountain property.” He paused. “It was part of Rashid’s onslaught. Never give them time to regroup. If we hit them there, they would know that they could be got at anywhere.”
“And he thought it was their main hub?”
“It made sense.”
King nodded. “And it’s high in the mountains near the Greece border?”
“Yes.”
“So, too far.”
“That’s what my maintenance task was. To rig something to give us extra range. Like camel packs of fuel, or something. I haven’t figured it out yet.” Flymo paused. “But I couldn’t continue if I wanted to.”
“Why?”
“Funds. Rashid never came back, and I can’t open the safe.”
King nodded. “We need some eyes and ears on that place.”
“We?”
“What else do you suggest?” King answered tersely. “A thorough reconnaissance before we go in.”
Flymo frowned. “I’m still not convinced you’re not going to kill me.”
King tucked the pistol into his pocket and showed the man the palms of his hands. “Relax. I’m not going to kill you. I want you to work on those fuel tanks.”
“But, like I said, I’m out of funds.”
“You have transport?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. You follow me back to town and I’ll get you the funds you need. While you’re there, I’ll give you a shopping list. You can bring the things I want back here, then get on with the task of making that bird capable of flying twice as far.”
“Twice as far?”
“At least.”
“But we can’t put surveillance on their base.”
“Let me worry about that.” He paused. “Do you have the coordinates?”
“Yes.”
“Write them down for me before we leave.”
Flymo nodded. “Okay, but we certainly can’t hit it with just the two of us.”
“All I ask is that if or when the time comes, you get me in and you get me out,” said King. “If you don’t show up for extraction, then I’ll hunt you down and I’ll kill you.”
Flymo looked at him, took in King’s eyes and expression, then said, “I believe you.”
14
Novyalaski, Russia
Novyalaski was a one-horse town. Except the horse had wandered off and left the residents to it years ago. And King could see why. He had arrived three days before and started to build a legend that he was a fly-fisherman looking for an adventure. It wasn’t a bad plan as there were a myriad of lakes with hundreds of streams feeding them and several businesses had sprung up selling tackle and bait and offering quadbike hire and even guides to the seasoned fisherman turned adventurer. The only problem was King realised he knew nothing about fly fishing. He had Googled what he could and had purchased some equipment before he had left the country, but now that he was faced with building on his legend, he wished he had taken a d
ifferent approach. Still, it wasn’t like there would be that many people out there to see he barely knew one end of the rod from another.
King had checked into a hotel, or more accurately, a bar with a few rooms out back. Breakfast had been included and consisted of some hard cheese, bread rolls, cured pork or bacon fat, pickled cabbage, and a shot of vodka. Like most Russians in the area, if he so wished he could be drunk by nine, depressed by eleven, comatose by two. But he wasn’t staying around the town to succumb to its limited delights, and had hired a beaten up quadbike with two spare fuel cans strapped to the back, and the guy had thrown in an old Mosin Nagant 7.62x54mm bolt action rifle and four rounds of ammunition for the bears. Or wolves. He had offered to take King out back for a lesson but shrugged when King checked the action and looked over the weapon. It was clear he knew his way around a rifle. The man then explained in poor English not to try and outrun a bear on the quadbike, because it could only do fifty kilometres an hour, but the bears could reach fifty-five kilometres an hour in short bursts. King looked at the four brass cartridges in his hand and hoped bear encounters would be rare but reflected that at least he would be better prepared than when he had last crossed paths with one.
The terrain was Arctic tundra meets Great American Plains, and once he had gotten out of the rounded, grassy foothills, the wooded mountains reminded him of the Black Hills in South Dakota, and he figured that Russia and the continental USA had been joined once and that, geographically at least, the two nations were extremely similar.
King checked his phone’s GPS. The signal was low, although he was surprised that he had any signal at all. But he had a compass and a map and had reset the odometer on the quadbike. He already knew the lay of the land and after an hour, he skirted a small town and continued parallel to the road, around a mile away from it until it crossed with his course and he carried on heading North East. He knew the town was significant to the area, as it served as a junction for the Trans-Siberian Railway and a vital supply route. King’s ride would now steepen significantly as he left the road, the town, and the railway line behind him and headed into the mountains. The only roads within an area of eight thousand square miles were now narrow undressed tracks, and of course the main road behind him. The area was vast, and there were parts where you could drive three hundred miles in any direction without meeting any form of human habitation.
After another hour, King stopped and got off to stretch his legs. He unstrapped the rifle and slung it over his shoulder and walked up the steep slope to the peak. He could see for miles in every direction. Horizon to horizon. The town was visible, but only barely, a faded sprawl on the cusp of what he could see. He estimated twenty miles, but the elevation meant he could pick it out against the grassy plains surrounding it. To the North East, he could see a network of narrow roads, but it then dawned on him it was in fact one road – a twisting ribbon weaving through the peaks, with possibly twenty hairpin turns as it gained in elevation towards the summit, then reappeared on the peak behind, then the one behind that. He was near. He was in the same time zone, at least. The vast country had eleven of them, after all.
He walked back down to the quadbike and checked the fuel. It needed a tankful, which took half the first can. Seeing as he’d started off with a full tank, that meant he could only go on for half the tank, and that did not leave room for the gradients he would now be faced with, nor the fact that he could become lost. Just half an hour of looking for a landmark or an alternative route would eat into his fuel supply. He reflected, as he took out the Primus stove and poured water into his mess tin, that the country was beyond comprehensible scale. On a previous mission, he had once encountered a forested area larger than France, and he knew that the Boreal Forest was six times larger than the entire Amazon rainforest.
“Took your time.”
King smiled, as he tossed two teabags into the mess tin, along with some powdered milk. He looked up and frowned. “I thought getting a brew on would bring you out.”
Dave Lomu nodded, as he headed down the slope from a clump of alder brush. “Got any scran?”
“Salted pork fat?”
“Crackling?”
“No,” King smiled. “Raw pork fat soaked in salt and then dried for a bit. But not too much, because it feels pretty soft. Like lard.”
“You’re kidding…”
King dug into his day sack and took out a packet of biscuits. He tossed them at the man mountain in front of him and stirred the brew. Dave Lomu was six-foot four and eighteen stone, his skin as black as coal and he had left his native Fiji at sixteen when a British Army recruitment ship had sailed into port and whisked himself and other young men away with stories of a better life. King did not know if the better life had materialised, but Lomu had excelled in the army, made it into the SAS and after a stint as a security contractor and mercenary, was eventually recruited by MI5 on a contracting basis. Known affectionately as ‘Big Dave’, Lomu was famed for both his appetite and his strength.
“So, what have you seen?”
“Romanovitch isn’t there anymore. He’s taken off to St. Petersburg. Apparently, the place is normally like a Russian version of the Playboy Mansion. Romanovitch comes up here on the pretence of hunting and fishing, and while he does a bit of both, he also has hot and cold running women on tap.”
“Standard,” said King. “Russian oligarchs and crime kingpins alike. Russian men in powerful positions see having sex with women outside of marriage as a confirmation of their status. They’ll often seal a business deal with an orgy.”
“I’m in the wrong job.”
King laughed and poured the soupy brew of tea into two metal cups, handing one to Lomu who had finished half the biscuits. “Think of Rome and the Roman Empire. That’s what half these Russian tycoons think they are building.”
“Still, I’m in the wrong job.”
“And the asset?”
He shrugged. “I followed them to town, some of the staff, I mean. No idea who the asset could be. The cook and the maid went into town twice.”
“Accompanied?”
“Not until recently,” he replied. “Apparently one of Romanovitch’s men follows loosely now. I was told he should probably have been more high-profile. He keeps tabs on the staff, then stops off for a drink in a bar, then gets back to following them around for a bit. Something’s changed in the dynamic. Since Romanovitch has been in St. Petersburg the place is run on a skeleton staff, where before there were plenty of his men there.” Big Dave paused. “It’s not been an easy assignment. They’re bloody racist here. I don’t think many have seen somebody my colour before. Comments, stupid questions. I haven’t exactly blended in. I don’t think Black Lives Matter would get much of a foothold here.”
“Sorry but needs must.”
“Great, scraping the barrel, then?”
King laughed, drank some tea, grimacing at the taste. “Sorry, forgot the sugar.”
Lomu dropped a couple of biscuits in his and swilled the cup around so they dissolved in the brown liquid. “They’ll sweeten it up.”
“Christ…”
“So, got your head around retirement, then?”
“Doesn’t look like it, does it?”
“Then, what the hell are you doing here?”
King shrugged. “Rashid.”
“He’s tough. And he’s a big boy. He knows the score.”
“I haven’t got many friends.”
“You’ve got a beautiful woman and the chance to start a new chapter. Given your history, you’re lucky to have made it this far.” He shrugged. “I don’t get it.”
“Like I said, Rashid.”
“Bullshit, man! You miss the action!”
King shrugged, sipped some of his tea.
“We’ve all been there for each other. The team, the guys back in the regiment. It goes with the territory. You watch your buddy’s back. But you also know that things happen and sometimes you will lose. You need to be ready for that, and Ras
hid will have been. He knows that, and you know that. I think this is more about what happened to Marnie, than going to the aid of a former soldier who knows that shit happens, and that it may be time for him to stand easy, service done.”
“I thought you wanted to change careers and be a Russian oligarch? Not a psychotherapist…” King snapped, annoyed with the intrusion into his business.
“Just say’in.”
King drank down the terrible brew. But he reflected that it wasn’t so bad. He’d had worse. He’d once made a mess tin of tea with his own piss in a wadi in Iraq, so he wasn’t near leaving it just yet.
“Where’s your transport?”
“Down the other side of the hill,” said Big Dave. “You’re going to love it. I don’t think Discoveries or Range Rover Vogues have made it out this far yet. Not to the average Russian, at least.”
15
Dave Lomu had secured a truck. A four by four with military history, roughly modelled on early Jeep design. It was called a UAZ 469 and had four seats, two bench seats and a canvas roof which may have once been waterproof, but King held out no hope in the event of rainfall, judging by the eight-inch gash in the fabric above his head. But its four cylinder, seventy-horsepower engine started, ran and didn’t sound as rough as King had expected, although a great many horses had bolted from its engine over the years and the vehicle struggled up some of the steeper inclines.
King had stashed the quadbike in the treeline, but he needn’t have worried, the odds of somebody stumbling across it was higher than winning the lottery. Twice. He had taken the rifle with him, and his day sack and Big Dave had picked up a battered and worn AK-47 supposedly for the bears, but more likely for whatever Russian threat stood in their way. King quietly reflected on the country and its people as he bounced away over the rough ground. The United States was full of hunters who used rifles costing many thousands of dollars with optics costing even more, argued in internet forums about the muzzle energy, velocity and ballistic properties needed for hunting brown bears and how it differed for caribou or moose, or that smaller projectiles with a higher velocity were needed for mountain lions. Just as debated was what kind of back-up pistol was needed and shot placement required for certain animals. The Russians just slung what in hunting terms was a relatively low powered assault rifle over their shoulder, sunk a couple of shots of vodka and headed off into the wilderness. If they were to shoot a bear and the bullet did not prove enough for the creature’s size and mass or motion, then they just mowed it down on fully automatic. The same went for the vehicles. The UAZ was rough and basic and thirty-five years old, but it still worked and somebody somewhere had put their faith in it when winter temperatures dropped to minus thirty degrees Celsius and there was nobody to come and help them. He had always believed the Russians simply made use of what they had – borne from years of poverty and repression - and when something worked, they just stuck with it. They were not a nation of progress, but they were stoical and practical and resolute. And in his experience, that had always made them a formidable race.
