Die Trying (9 page)

Gardner spied Silver Hair jumping into the front seat. He tossed the car keys to one of the
mafya
goons, who promptly stowed the suitcase in the boot and climbed into the sleeper truck’s driving seat. The engine sputtered. He reversed into the main road, the Lincoln following.

Gardner was alone. Just him, eleven corpses and the caustic stench of spent ammo.

When he was sure the Russians were out of sight, he picked himself up and made his way across the field towards the rest stop.

Bald was a smeared-red heap on the ground. His body was contorted, arms splayed to his left, legs to his right. There wasn’t much left of his limbs, and the bullets to his core had almost severed him in half. Gardner rested his eyes on his old mucker for a moment. This is what you get, John, he thought. Staring at the fag butts in the blood, the holes in his face, he experienced both hate and relief in his stomach. They mixed in his throat, formed a bitter taste in his mouth.

‘Stupid bastard,’ he said to the dead Scot.

The silence was broken by a faint dribbling noise to his nine o’clock. He glanced across his shoulder and spied a body lying in the field, fifty metres distant.

Surely not, he said to himself.

Valon was still alive when Gardner came upon him, his chest swelling and retracting in an erratic beat. Nearer to Valon, Gardner saw that his right arm was missing from the bicep down. Strips of flesh flapped against his bone. The HE grenade had mashed him up but failed to kill him.
Gardner figured the round had landed a couple of metres short of the target.
Anything inside a three-metre kill zone and Valon would have been dust.

Sad twists of his entrails seeped out of the guy’s abdomen. Flaps of skin, hard black chips, protruded from the wound. The stench of burned human flesh hit Gardner. He retched in the back of his throat. Knelt down beside Valon.

The Albanian spoke in childish gurgles. His one good lung fought to fill his body with air. The right side of his face looked as though someone had roasted it on a barbecue. Warts and boils on his skin crackled like pork fat. His eyes were scorched opaque.

Gardner spotted something red on his right wrist. Too bright and plasticky to be blood. He bent forward for a closer look.

And did a double-take.

Valon wore a bracelet identical to the one Gardner had been given by Land and had put on the Albanian’s left wrist. Not quite believing what he was seeing, Gardner reached for Valon’s left arm. The same fucking tag, and the same fucking question: what’s Valon doing with two MI6 bracelets?

‘I’m with the Firm,’ Valon said, answering Gardner’s curious face. ‘I work… have been for years… Since the war.’ His facial muscles convulsed. Valon took a deep breath.

‘Back at Aimée’s flat,’ Gardner said. ‘You deliberately missed your shot, didn’t you?’

Valon nodded, his mouth emitting a guttural murmur. Some new and hidden pain was making itself heard inside his mutilated body. ‘Jesus, I… couldn’t give up my cover. They wanted… you dead. I had to make it look like… you were.’

He examined his wounds, his mouth ajar in horror. The skin around the right eyeball had been blown away. Gardner could almost make out the connective cords at the back of his eye.

‘You must stop the Russians… They’re going to a rendezvous in… shit!’

Gardner closed his eyes for a second. He’d seen a lot of trauma wounds in his time, but nothing as messed up as Valon’s. His were gopping.

‘Drobny, on the border,’ Valon continued, drawing in breath and choking on it like glass. ‘The church. Two o’clock. It is very important you get to the truck. Before it continues its journey and—’

‘And Aimée? You told me she was nabbed by the Grey Wolf. Is that a lie?’

Valon was delirious. ‘Sotov. He has her.’ He gulped. Made a gargling noise in his throat.

The words gnawed at Gardner’s stomach. He pushed Aimée to the back of his mind.

‘What’s in the truck?’ he said.

He detected a soft, flopping sound inside the other man’s chest.

‘Talk to me, Klint. The fucking truck.’

But Valon was on the brink. His breath stilled like frost in his mouth.

Gardner watched him pass over.

He dug out his mobile, called Land. Needed to give him the heads-up on how the drug exchange had gone fubar.

Six rings, seven – and no fucking answer.

An automated female voice asked him to leave a message after the bleep.

Gardner declined. He knew that the Russians were transporting the truck and Sotov had followed directly behind it in the Lincoln. The odds on him accompanying the truck all the way to Drobny were more than reasonable.

So that’s what you’ll do. Get to the village of Drobny in the hour. That’ll give you just under thirty minutes to intercept whatever the fuck’s in the truck. Time-wise it’s tighter than a Jock at a Poundstretcher, but since when you did roll any other way?

He raced back towards the Nissan.

1253 hours.

‘That was crazy,’ Popov said, laughing, as he drove through the factory gates. The site had once been the pride of Serbian industry, building cars and motorbikes for the West. Now it was a barren pit, the machinery rusted brown, stockpiles of spare motor parts.

‘I mean, those Italian shitheads. They got what they had coming to them. But that Scottish guy was out of his fucking mind. Trying to run at you with a fucking knife, Aleks. I’ve never seen anything like it.’ Popov beat his palms against the wheel, shaking his head.

‘The Scot used to be an SAS soldier,’ Sotov said. ‘They’re taught never to give up.’

They parked inside the excavated shell of a factory building. Sotov ordered his two surviving henchmen to leave the vehicle and perform a perimeter search. The Grey Wolf waited by the Lincoln, Popov next to him and staring in the direction of the two men.

‘The Englishman this morning,’ Popov said. ‘The one who died in the fire. He was SAS too?’

Sotov nodded.

‘Two SAS soldiers murdered in a single day.’ He laughed, but the sound came out like he was having a seizure.

A white Ford Transit shuttled into the factory entrance. Sotov watched the van draw up alongside the Lincoln. Two men, big as grizzly bears and equally as dumb, got out. One sported a tacky gold necklace. Bulgarians have no taste, Sotov thought. But at least they come cheap. The man with the necklace opened the Transit’s rear doors. Sotov smiled.

The bitch was inside.

‘In the boot,’ Sotov ordered the Bulgarians.

‘Let me go!’ the girl yelled, backing deep inside the van. ‘Please!’

Sotov watched her the way a visitor might look at a creature in the zoo. He lit a Ziganov, his nostrils venting smoke into the van. ‘Does she have a name?’

‘Aimée,’ said Necklace Guy.

He liked the name. Had a nice ring to it.

‘My sweet Aimée, there’s no point blaming me for the situation you find yourself in. We know you were with the English soldier. We know he told you certain things.’

Her face hardened. The Bulgarians disappeared out the front of the factory.

‘I believe,’ Sotov directed his gaze at Aimée, ‘his name was Joe Gardner.’

He waited for the words to sink in. Aimée paused for a beat.

‘He’ll make you pay for this, he’ll—’

‘But he’s dead, my dear.’

Aimée stared blankly back at Sotov. As though she didn’t understand – didn’t
want
to understand – the words coming out of his mouth.

‘The fire at your flat this morning. He was trapped inside.’ Sotov suppressed a laugh. It tried to push free at the corners of his lips. ‘Burning is a terrible way to go. The flames take a long time to kill a man. There is much suffering.’

Tears slipped down Aimée’s cheeks. Her lips trembled.

‘You’re lying,’ she said, her voice breaking, weak.

‘I’m afraid not. No one is coming to save you, Aimée. It’s just you and me.’ Sotov leaned into the van. He pinched her teary cheek. ‘You and me,’ he whispered, Sotov reeling in his finger. A teardrop plinked on to his fingertip. He tasted it. Salty, and yet somehow sweet.

‘Now, the problem with the SAS,’ he went on, ‘with people like Joe Gardner, is that they don’t give up very easy. A Russian man – you beat him once, he runs like a fucking dog. Not the same with the British. Gardner can’t have been operating by himself. There must be other soldiers working with him, yes?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Come on, my sweet. You slept with Gardner; you fucking stink of sex. And a man will tell a woman anything, even his most closely guarded secrets, to get her into bed. He will have said things to you. Plans, numbers, names.’

‘He didn’t, I swear!’

The cold light of day punctured Aimée’s beauty. She had a bruised eye, a bloodied nose. Some marks on her wrists. As if she’d been trapped in the van with a wild dog. Yet with a bit of work and a few days to let her wounds heal, she could be a model.

‘I do hope you’re not claustrophobic, my dear,’ Sotov said. ‘We’re going for a little ride.’

The Bulgarians had returned. Necklace Guy stashed a silencer pistol into his jacket pocket. Popov glared daggers at them, but they stared ahead, small eyes rooted to the van. They grappled with the bitch. She flailed. Necklace Guy wrapped his substantial arms around her chest and transported her to the Lincoln, his bloated legs waddling from side to side.

Popov went to the car and reached inside. Pushed a button on the dashboard. The boot yawned.

‘Joe’s still alive. I’m sure of it,’ Aimée said.

‘Yes, yes,’ Sotov chuckled. ‘Of course he is. Don’t worry. Soon the reality of your situation will hit you, and you’ll talk.’

‘I told you, I don’t know about any plans.’

Sotov considered the sky. ‘That’s too bad. Because if you don’t tell me what I want to know, I’ll have to do things to you. Things that will make you cry. Things that will make you wish you had never been born.’ He turned to face her. ‘Think about it now, why don’t you?’

The Bulgarians chucked the girl in like she was a rolled-up carpet. Sotov heard a dull thump as the boot locked shut, the Lincoln rocking on its rear wheels. Her shouts seeped through the exterior, muffled and distant. Yes, she was a wild one all right. Sotov looked forward to having fun with her. It was so much more exciting when they fought back.

‘Thank you, Denis.’

Popov rubbed his hands. They were smeared with blood. ‘No problem.’

Sotov laughed with his mouth closed. ‘No, I mean – for everything.’

Popov’s hands abruptly stopped. He stared at something on the ground. ‘I’m afraid I don’t understand, Aleks.’

‘I’m afraid you do.’

Popov suddenly became aware of the Bulgarians closing in on him. He backed off, edging closer to his shadow cast against the wall. Popov’s eyes flicked from the two men to Sotov. The Grey Wolf and his chauffeur stared at each other for a brief moment.

‘Why—?’ Popov’s voice was ghostly, as if his soul had already left his body.

‘You know why, Denis. No more games.’

Popov was quiet. He stared at the pickaxe in Necklace Guy’s hand.

‘Make it slow,’ Sotov told the Bulgarian. Then he walked outside for a cigarette. Caught the squelching sound the pickaxe made as it gored Popov’s face. Sotov emerged from the factory, and the door shut on Popov’s feeble groans.

1334 hours.

Drobny was forty-five minutes’ drive along the border with Macedonia. Gardner gunned the accelerator. The speedometer on the Nissan hit 140. The chassis felt like it was stuck together with scotch tape. A question whizzed across the pulsing surface of his brain. What’s in the truck? And another question: did John know he wasn’t going to be paid in cash?

The road rose, then lulled, then flattened as he drove deeper into the Serbian badlands.

Gardner had been to Drobny once before. Back in 1999, he and John Bald had been given orders to man an observation post on a hill overlooking an Orthodox church. When the militia arrived they’d rounded up every ethnic Albanian suspected of collusion with the Kosovo Liberation Army and imprisoned them inside the school. They were being held captive there, and the NATO gin merchants wanted to verify reports about ethnic cleansing. Gardner and Bald were given strict instructions not to intervene.

They had moved in at night, tasked to recce what the head shed, in their fancy language, called ‘suspicious activity’. What the two of them found in Drobny wasn’t suspicious. It was paid-in-f murder.

A chilly November dawn, the cold scraping Gardner’s lungs. The fourth day of their mission. Bald had shaken him awake. They’d been on a hard stag routine, each man taking the watch in four-hour turns while the other ate ration packs, rested and operated the radio.

‘Look, Joe,’ Bald had whispered as ten militiamen frog-marched eighty civilians into the cemetery. He’d handed the binos to Gardner and he had looked on as the civilians were lined up against the church wall.