by Andy Maslen
Gabriel and Eli swung their bags into the back of the SandCat, noting the boxes of field rations and water containers thoughtfully provided by Sultanov, and then, with Gabriel behind the wheel, they waved to the colonel and roared away across the concrete apron towards the gate in the perimeter fence he’d pointed out. Next stop: TK Industries.
Awkward Luggage
THE SandCat performed surprisingly well on the road for a military vehicle. The ride was hard, but not harsh, and conversation was possible above the growl of its engine, thrumming away under the reinforced steel armour of the bonnet.
“You know the origins of the SandCat?” Eli asked as Gabriel headed northwest towards the city of Karaganda.
“It’s Oshkosh. That US outfit.”
“Yeah, but before that?”
“No. But I have a feeling I’m about to learn something new.”
“Yes you are,” she said, looking out through the windscreen. “It’s based on the Caracal, which was designed by Plasan of Israel. Since Oshkosh took it on, they’ve been using the Ford F550 chassis, plus it has the 6.4-litre Ford V8 diesel under the hood.”
“Goodness me. First your Jericho, and now our little dune buggy here. Please tell me there are some nice salt beef sandwiches in the food boxes back there.”
Eli laughed. “You wish. I’ve a feeling it’ll be field rations like every army on the planet provides.”
“Yeah, well, we can at least get a decent meal tonight.”
“Why? Where are we staying?”
Gabriel cleared his throat and adopted a formal “tour-guide” voice.
“Tonight, we shall be staying at the Cosmonaut. Voted the best hotel in Karaganda in 2015. The hotel benefits from a pool and fitness centre, and Wi-Fi in all rooms.”
Eli put her boots up on the dashboard. “Great. I fancy a steak and some French fries.”
“I’m sure as a discerning gourmet, madam will be able to find what she is looking for in the excellent Zhuldyz restaurant.”
The SandCat looked grotesquely out of place in the hotel’s car park. Gabriel parked at the end of a row, cruising past dozens of glossy black, silver, and gunmetal Mercedes, BMWs and Audis. It towered over them, even dwarfing a Porsche Cayenne SUV parked haphazardly across two spaces.
“What shall we do with the kit?” Eli asked, stretching by the SandCat’s steel-armoured flank.
Gabriel shrugged. “Two choices. We lock it inside or take it up to our room. I’d be inclined to leave it here. It’s a military-spec vehicle and anyone looking to nick a car would pick one of those,” he said, waving his hand at the ranks of gleaming German automobiles.
“On the other hand, if anyone did break in or take it, we’re basically fucked.”
“So what are you saying, sling a couple of assault rifles over our shoulders and check in as normal with two boxes of ammo apiece?”
“No, of course not! Why are you always so sarcastic?”
“It’s not sarcasm. It’s British humour.”
“Oh, yes, the famous British sense of humour. Monty Python, Benny Hill. I get it. Ha, ha.”
Gabriel frowned. “What’s up?”
Eli sighed. “Oh, nothing. Sorry. I’m just tired. But I still think we shouldn’t leave the weapons in the truck.”
“Give me ten minutes. I’ll do a quick recce round the back of the hotel. Maybe I can find something to camouflage them with.”
Eli continued stretching, bending from side to side and alternately pulling her feet up behind her, leaning on the massive door of the SandCat.
“Don’t be too long. I need a shower.”
Gabriel trotted off towards the hotel. Avoiding the smart frontage, he headed for the rear of the building. Wherever there’s a hotel, there are kitchens, laundries, goods inwards loading bays – all kinds of interesting places. To the rear of the kitchen, easily identifiable by the steaming vents high on the walls that were emitting a delicious aroma of frying meat, Gabriel saw a square-based, wheeled wire trolley about six feet tall and three on each side. In it were squashed dozens of cardboard boxes. Presumably, they’d once held catering supplies. He wandered over, checking left and right for hotel staff, but they were all inside working. None of the boxes were the right size for the rifles. He carried on mooching around, hands in pockets, hoping, if he did meet anyone, they’d take him for a guest off the beaten track.
Rounding a corner, he saw another of the big metal recycling trolleys. Like the first, this one was crammed with squashed cardboard. But then, result! Behind it were several big boxes, as tall as a man, stacked one on top of the other. Coming closer, he saw exactly what they had contained. Printed on the tops in black were images of rowing machines and Concept 2 logos. Aha! The gym manager is refreshing the equipment!
Gabriel looked around once more. Nobody about. He selected the topmost carton and carried it back to the car, holding on tight as an early evening breeze threatened to tug the unwieldy box from his grasp. Back with Eli, he laid the carton at her feet like a cat with a particularly large tribute for its mistress.
“This ought to do it,” he said. You load the stuff in. I’m going to find a trolley.”
He returned five minutes later with a showier item than the recycling trolleys he had already seen. This one had a carpet base and fake gold plating on an arching pole that served both as a handle and framework to stop guests’ suitcases from tumbling off.
Together, they lifted the rowing machine box onto the carpeted platform. The hotel had even thoughtfully provided a bungee cord, which Gabriel stretched round the waist of the carton before interlocking the two hooks.
With their two holdalls packed around the base, they made their way round to the front door of the hotel.
“You wait here,” Gabriel said. “I’ll get us checked in, then I’ll give you a wave. Just bring it in smartly and we’ll take it up in the lift. If anyone asks you what you’re doing just speak to them in Hebrew.”
He was back within a few minutes, smiling. “Everything good?” Eli asked.
He nodded. “Let’s go.”
Timing their entrance to coincide with the arrival of a coach party of Russian tourists, they marched around the edge of the reception area and were in a lift heading for the fifth floor a few moments after that.
The hotel’s restaurant was huge. On this weekday evening, it was deserted apart from the waiters and one or two guests. Gabriel and Eli had been seated at a corner table large enough for six, covered with a custard-yellow tablecloth and featuring a chunky glass candlestick with a single, fat, red candle burning merrily. They sat adjacent to each other and, once the food had been consumed – two excellent steaks and a mountain of French fries – the conversation turned to the mission. Normally, Gabriel would have waited until they had the privacy of their room, but the nearest diner was twenty feet away.
“Don supplied the GPS references for Kamenko’s factory and his house. It’s about four hours’ driving from here to the factory. I think we need to identify him, hopefully there, snatch him, and then find somewhere quiet to interrogate him.”
“Yeah, or we could take him at the house.”
“Let’s scope them both out, see where he has the most security. He’s aiming to be a national politician, so he’s bound to have a squad of goons in tow.”
Eli nodded. “It’s all a bit thin, though, isn’t it? Two names.”
“Yes. But think of it. We have the name of one of his customers. Admittedly she’s retail, not wholesale, but we’ve breached the first line of defence. These outfits always trade on total secrecy, so that’s a problem for him. And we have the name of one his customers’ clients.”
“He could clam up. Wait it out.”
“He could. But come on, Eli, we both know that your CV isn’t just running about shooting at insurgents and terrorists.”
“I’m not going to torture him, if that’s what you mean. The IDF has always been a highly moral fighting force. When virtually the whole region wants Israel d
estroyed, we have to hold ourselves to the highest standards.”
Gabriel shook his head and murmured. “I’m not saying we have to torture him. But we can apply a fair degree of psychological pressure, can’t we? Plus, remember, he’s a businessman. You and I have had training, but even we’d crack after 24 hours. He’s not had that training, so I reckon we can break him. If he knows anything at all about Erin Ayers, we’re going to get it out of him.”
Eli set her mouth in a line, compressing her lips together. Then she spoke.
“Yes. We are.”
Crack Shot
TIMUR Kamenko was not aware he was being watched. Nor were his two bodyguards, chosen for their brawn, more than their brains. This lack of strategy in recruiting his security personnel would come back on Kamenko. At six foot two, he was as tall as his protection, but what he matched in the vertical dimension he lacked in all the others. Where he was a trim figure in his two-piece, brown suit and English brogues, the two men flanking him were hewn from altogether tougher material. Both men weighed well over sixteen stone, the greater proportion of it muscle, bone and sinew. Their shaved heads revealed a variety of white scars, mementoes of gang fights, military engagements and their work for Kamenko himself.
They’d arrived ten minutes earlier in a beaten-up Toyota Hilux pickup, and were now waiting to escort their boss to work.
Kamenko was not conventionally handsome. In fact, quite the reverse. His features were asymmetrical and distributed across his face as if purely for function. His nose, broken when he was a young man, was pushed off to the left, whereas his mouth had a definite rightwards slant, as if he’d suffered a stroke at some point. The effect was to give his face a permanent sneer. Yet, despite the effect of his features’ trying to escape each other’s company, something about his eyes – hard, blue and shaded by thick, brown eyebrows – mesmerised people: customers, employees, suppliers, the few people he called friends, and the politicians with whom he socialised.
He was standing outside the massive double front door of his house. Incongruously, it was built in the style of a Spanish hacienda, with white stucco walls and terracotta barrel tiles on the roof, and would have looked more at home in Miami than the outskirts of Karaganda.
“Nurslan, bring the car round,” he said.
The larger of the two bodyguards nodded once, and walked away to a separate garage with two doors.
As the motorised door clattered upwards and recessed into the roof of the garage, Kamenko turned to his other bodyguard, a seventeen-stone giant with arms so heavily muscled, they strained the leather of his jacket.
“I’m meeting the Russian today. He has some plans that I’m interested in acquiring. Try and get friendly with his men. See what you can learn, OK?”
“OK, boss,” the man said. His name was Ortekhan, but he was known in the company as tişqan – mouse.
To surveil their quarry, Eli had first driven the SandCat directly into a patch of tall thorn bushes and scraggy undergrowth half a mile from the house.
Now she sat cross-legged on the roof, Swarovski EL 50 binoculars held to her eyes.
“He’s got two heavies with him. Real golems.”
“Real whats?”
Eli began speaking in what Gabriel had come to think of as her ‘teacher voice.’
“The golem was a huge giant made out of clay that a rabbi created to protect the Prague ghetto in the sixteenth century. Very strong, very dumb. You know the type.”
“What are they doing?”
“Leaving in a four-by-four. Looks like a Merc G-Wagen.”
“Anyone seeing him off?”
She shook her head. “Nope. No little woman handing him a packet of sandwiches and a briefcase.”
“OK. Let’s leave him to get to work, then check out the house.”
They left the SandCat buried in the thorn bushes and made their way to the house on foot. The AK-74s were locked in the back, but they were carrying the pistols, loaded with Parabellum rounds.
The sun was warm on Gabriel’s back, and if he hadn’t been about to break into the house of an ultra-nationalist politician and illicit ammunition tycoon, he almost could have enjoyed the exercise.
“We’ll start at the back, away from the road,” Gabriel said.
“Hey, who put you in charge?” Eli asked, with a smile.
“I deferred to you over sleeping with our guns. Now it’s my turn. Plus it’s my life Erin Ayers is fucking around with, remember?”
The back of the house looked out over the countryside. Nothing to match the rolling pastoral landscape Gabriel was used to. More of a featureless plain dotted with stands of birch trees and thorn bushes. But best of all, it was entirely free of other properties that could overlook either its rightful owner or the two people about to break in. They passed a stone-built well on their way up to the house, capped with a sturdy wooden lid strapped with iron bands.
Gabriel fished out a leather roll of lock picks from the thigh pocket of his trousers. The lock was a simple Yale-type, and he was through in ten seconds.
“Perhaps he relies on his reputation to keep him safe,” Eli said.
“Or his golems,” Gabriel answered, opening the back door and stepping into some sort of storage room.
Boots were arranged in neatly paired rows, for walking, horse-riding and motorcycling. Coat racks were hung with leather jackets, waxed riding coats, fleeces and hoodies. And arranged on wooden racks, all facing the same way, and gleaming with polish and gun oil, half a dozen long guns: hunting rifles by Sako, a pair of Beretta under-and-over shotguns and, at the very top, what appeared to be a box-fresh AK-47, the precursor of the AK-74s locked in the back of the SandCat, and the granddaddy of all the post-Soviet assault rifles.
“Impressive,” Eli said.
“I guess he likes to test-fire his own product,” Gabriel replied.
“Hold on. I want to even up the odds.”
Eli took down the lowest of the long guns – a Sako – and, working swiftly and efficiently, removed the bolt. Gabriel took the hint and did the same with a second rifle. With all the bolts and firing pins removed and stowed in Eli’s backpack, they replaced the guns on the rack.
“Let’s split up,” Gabriel said. “I’ll take the upstairs, you stay down here.”
She nodded in agreement. “Stay safe.”
Gabriel searched the upper floor systematically, moving from room to room, checking for more weapons. In what was clearly the master bedroom, a large room furnished luxuriously with a huge Chinese rug in jade green and rose pink, red-and-gold brocade curtains, and heavy antique furniture as well as an enormous sleigh-bed made from cherrywood, he found a Russian-made Makarov pistol in a side table. Loaded and one in the chamber. He dropped out the magazine, emptied the rounds into a pocket, then racked the slide twice to eject the round in the chamber. Coming back downstairs, he heard Eli call from the front of the house.
“I’ve found something!”
He joined Eli in Kamenko’s home office, a stark contrast to the opulence of the master bedroom. Just plain white walls, a functional desk made from a thick slab of oak, and grey, steel filing cabinets. Eli was kneeling in front of a scratched, grey-green safe. It was about eighteen inches tall and a foot square at its base, and had no combination wheel, just a keyhole closed with a brass flap, and a polished steel handle.
“Doesn’t look like much, does it?” he asked. “You any good at safe cracking?”
She shook her head. “I know people who are, but that’s not much help right now.” Then she grinned. “On the other hand …”
She reached into a jacket pocket, pulled out a magazine for her pistol, and swapped it for the one currently snug in the grip of the GSh-18.
“Remember Colonel Sultanov said they could fire overpressure Russian rounds? He said they were armour-piercing. Wanna find out?”
“Be my guest.”
She stood, and together they backed off to the other side of the office.
Sh
e levelled her pistol and aimed at the lock. Then lowered her gun arm.
“Wait,” she said. “I don’t fancy getting hit by a ricochet.”
Gabriel went to the desk and upended it, then dragged it across the room to form a rudimentary firing position.
They crouched behind it and Eli once again aimed at the safe.
The report in the small room was deafening.
The uprated load of propellant exploded with a shattering bang and filled the office with the smell of burnt gunpowder.
They peered through the drift of smoke towards the safe.
The keyhole was now more of a key cave, widened from its original quarter-inch to a ragged edged, inch-wide cavity.
Gabriel skirted the desk and knelt in front of the safe. “Great shooting,” he said with a grin. Then he pulled down on the handle and yanked it towards him. Its lock destroyed by the steel penetrator at the core of the bullet, the door opened silently.
Inside, charred at their edges and smouldering with crawling orange trails of sparks, were a handful of buff cardboard folders. Gabriel grabbed them and batted out the burning edges with his palm. He took them out of the room, following Eli, and together they began opening the folders on the kitchen table.
Eli looked across at Gabriel as she turned over documents in her folder.
“You’re the linguistics expert. Do you read Kazakh?”
“If it was Russian, we’d be good, but I can’t read this. They both use Cyrillic letters and some of the words are kind of close, but there’s nothing I can get a handle on.”
