77 north, p.18
77 North, page 18
‘And if there are more?’
‘We’ll make the call. Regardless, then it’s three pulls on the string, tree across the road. You bring the Pajero up behind…’
‘Yoshi.’
‘You bring the Mitsubishi up, the truck has nowhere to go.’ He put his cig between his lips and made a pincer motion with his fingers. ‘We come in from the sides, game over.’
‘And explain “game over” to me again.’
He exhaled smoke. ‘They’ll fold, they always do. Imagine you’re a nineteen-year-old with no combat experience, holding an AK-47 you know you can’t hit anything with.’
‘I don’t have to imagine.’
‘So you know how they’ll feel when two big hard bastards tooled up to the neck come at them. Trust me, these militia guys, they’re feckless idiots. The ARN, they’re hard guys, they live out in the jungle, they’re CIA funded. I mean, they’re nothing up to us, but at least they’re the real deal.’ Justin dropped his cigarette and ground it into the floor with his boot. ‘The PRVN live in the city, they walk about giving it all that, they don’t have ideals, they’re just out for themselves. They’re not political, they just support the government because it’s easy. Total pussies.’
‘But still, no killing, right?’
‘Not if we can help it.’
‘Lions don’t care about zebras.’ Walshe laughed. ‘You two need a good scrap and a fuck, that’ll sort you out. Then you’ll be killing these motherfuckers left, right and centre.’ He picked up his sidearm and aimed at the window, miming shooting it.
I ignored him. ‘Then it’s a bridge too far?’
Justin nodded. ‘When the truck doesn’t show, the PRVN are gonna get suspect. And that’s gonna happen really bloody quickly, and it’s gonna be big, because when the Commissaire hears, the shit will hit the fan.’
‘And why does the Commissaire care?’
‘The Commissaire of the Democratic Peoples’ Army of Nambutu is like the president, basically, but on the city streets he uses the PRVN as his secret police. Think of the brownshirts or the Hitler Youth.’
I pushed my cigarette into the tabletop, watching it crumple. ‘Dude, this is nuts confusing.’
‘None of it matters, you don’t need to remember any of it. All you need to know is – truck stopped, weapons heisted. So you come around this older trail here and get down to the crossroads at Lusemba before the army come up the main road from the barracks. You’ll have less than ten minutes to blow the bridge.’
‘And the charges are set?’
‘They will be,’ said Walshe.
‘It sounds fancier than it is, it’s only a one-lane girder bridge, we’re not talking Operation Market Garden here. You blow the bridge and head back. Meanwhile, we’ve driven the truck south-west to meet the ARN and do the deal. You come in and pick us up.’
I was still playing with the crumpled cig, flicking smoking ash around the tabletop. ‘And the ARN will be cool, yeah?’
Justin looked at Walshe and raised his eyebrows.
‘They’re not gonna dare pull anything.’
‘Sounds iffy to me.’
‘They’ll be fine.’
‘So we’ve done the deal, got the cash, and are west over the border into Zangaro before anyone even knows anything’s happened.’
‘Clear?’ asked Walshe.
I sucked air through my teeth and flicked the tab end across the room. ‘There’s just one thing I’ve been thinking of.’
Justin sighed. ‘What is it?’
‘I’m on my own in the jungle.’
‘We’ll be a couple of hundred metres down the road.’
‘Okay, but basically, what if that guy comes?’
‘What fucking guy?’
‘What did you call him? The weirdo that picked me up at the airport.’
‘The headhunter?’ asked Walshe. ‘Don’t worry about him.’
‘I feel like I should be worried about someone called Headhunter.’
‘To be fair, he’s never far away,’ said Justin. ‘Fucker can smell blood, the guy’s a vulture, creaming off combat.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘They call him Le Démon Blanc,’ he said. ‘The White Demon, but no one really knows who he is. He appears whenever there’s fighting and disappears again just as quickly. Takes the bodies. And the wounded.’
‘There’s no hunting like the hunting of man,’ I said. ‘Anyone who’s hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never cares for owt else afterwards.’
‘What film’s that from?’ asked Walshe.
‘Hemingway, you nonce.’
‘Not seen it.’
Justin picked up another bottle of beer from the crate. ‘He gets paid by the Commissaire to hunt out rebels in the jungle, dollars per head.’ He cracked the top on the bar and handed it to Walshe. ‘He takes it literally.’
‘He’s just a scumbag mercenary,’ Walshe spat, ‘who’s spent too long with the natives.’
‘Heart of Darkness,’ I muttered. ‘So why did he want me?’
‘A head is a head, he’ll take people the easiest way he can. Usually that’s after skirmishes in the jungle.’
‘And sometimes it’s waiting at the airport for morons,’ added Walshe.
‘Right, so I get a gun, yeah?’
‘No,’ said Justin. ‘You get a gun, you’re more likely to get shot. Just keep your head down and do what we said.’
Walshe laughed. ‘Told you he was scared.’
I put on a defiant look to mask the fact I was scared shitless. ‘Welcome to the Jungle.’
Chapter Twenty-seven
Severnaya Zemlya, Siberia
Present day
There was zero light in the bunker, and not much more heat. It must have been over an hour since Golubev had slammed the door, an hour of thrusting my arm back and forth over the rough concrete. Dead with exertion, I carried on regardless. Several times I’d slipped, my concentration dipping, or my muscles simply giving out and cramping up. Each time, my knuckles and wrist bones had scraped along the same patch of concrete, which I now pictured scuffed with skin and streaked with the blood that I could feel running across the back of my hand.
Ubiquitous blue plastic rope: 6mm, tensile strength five-hundred-odd kilograms, or more than five of me. Impossible for me to snap; my bones would give way before it did. On the plus side, it’s not great with abrasion.
The rope had been getting noticeably looser for some time. Now I was scraping bare skin with every pass because the rope had almost rubbed through. I hurried up, gritting my teeth, and with a grunt and a pull, it finally gave way.
I let my arm flop to the ground, panting. But not for too long, as my muscles started up again, this time involuntarily as the cold crept in to fill the space determination and concentration had occupied.
I rolled onto one side and scrabbled at the rope on my left hand. The knot around my wrist was tight but I found I could just about get some wriggle room on the side tied through the iron ring on the floor. A few painful minutes later it was loose, and I was sat up massaging my wrists before setting about my ankles, with two hands this time.
I tried to orientate myself in the darkness, lying back down and imagining what I’d last seen.
Easier said than done when you’re barely conscious, but I was sure the door out was over to my right, with the door into my bedroom over to my left. I’d had a torch on my bedside table.
I crawled, one arm outstretched, feeling my way across the freezing floor. I reached a wall, cold plaster and condensation-damp paint flaking beneath my fingers. I crawled up close to it and followed along until my hand brushed a corner. Creeping my fingers around it, I felt a wooden door frame. But which one?
I reached up to open the door: more darkness. Feeling my way with my hands, I felt around for a light switch. Took me a while as it wasn’t where you’d normally think it was, but eventually I ran a hand along the metal conduit that carried the wire, and followed it to the metal box and toggle switch.
Nothing happened, which was as expected; the generator or supply had been shut off.
Turning to face the opposite wall, I got back down and crawled. Wasn’t long before I hit the opposite wall. I turned left and followed it, which I reckoned would take me to the bed.
The wall went on for too long, so I decided to cross to the other wall. The empty space went on too long as well; I was disoriented in the tunnels and had got turned round somehow. I stopped, taking a breather. The air was fetid, either from the lack of air con or the fact someone had been cooked in here.
A scraping noise came from somewhere in the darkness. I froze, literally, listening intently. It came again. Something was moving somewhere in the bunker. I wasn’t alone down here.
I had no idea how to find my room now but I wasn’t going to do it by staying put.
I went straight forward, away from the sound, crawling for a while before I found what felt like a door frame. I went into the room and turned, following the wall, figuring I’d find some furniture sooner or later that might be useful.
It stank in here. I gipped as I moved forward. My hand touched something wet.
I recoiled, staying put. I’d somehow gone straight through my room, through the doorway, and followed the corridor into Balakin’s room.
The noise came again from the darkness, a scuffling, scraping sound. Someone was moving through the tunnels. It was impossible to tell where it was, quiet and muffled through the walls but then amplified by the darkness and my tuned-in ears.
I moved forward, hands sliding on wet floor through what I can only describe as matter. The smell was awful. My fingers brushed something soft, then cold and metallic. It was a familiar shape. I grabbed it and hefted it. Volkov’s Glock, plucked from near the remains of Professor Balakin’s half-cremated arm.
Now I could orientate myself. I dropped the magazine out, ran a thumb over the round at the top, and slid it home. Racking the slide then holding the pistol out in front, I made my way back along the wall. Turning right at the door, I made my way down the corridor, still crawling. As I reached the doorway into my room, I stopped to listen.
The sounds had disappeared.
Had they gone? Or were they waiting?
I held my breath. Both the black and the silence were infinite.
I carefully stood, sidestepping until my leg touched the bed frame. I crouched and felt underneath, rejoicing as it brushed the bag of clothes Golubev’s men had dug up for me. Whatever was down here with me, I felt a lot better about facing it with clothes on.
A minute later I had what I presumed by touch was the security team’s black commando outfit: combats and a sweater with some clean socks. Even my watch was still sat where I’d left it, next to the torch on the bedside table. I didn’t turn the light on for fear of dazzling myself and also shining a beacon for whoever – or whatever – was down here.
Clothed and with a gun in my hand, suddenly the dark bunker was less forbidding. I sidestepped and touched something else. There was a scrape, something moved against the wall. The propped-up mirror! I dropped to my knees and reached out, catching an arm under it just before it smashed across the floor. It rocked on my arm, tapping the floor gently. Hopefully, seven years bad luck averted. I picked it up and heaved it onto the bed, lying it down where it could do no damage.
With the torch still off, but held ready in my left hand, I moved towards the far corner, and the door into the main area of the bunker.
I moved slowly, fingers alert, and felt the door frame. I ran them across and felt the void. The door had been open earlier as I’d managed to crawl straight through. I slowly crept along the tunnel, making it to the next door without making a sound.
The scuffling sound came again in the dark. I stopped halfway through the doorway, inadvertently tapping the torch against the wood.
The noises stopped. It’d heard me.
I held my breath.
The faintest brush of fabric rustled against the wall. I reckoned it was on the other side of this room.
I held out the pistol, feeling like Pat Garrett aiming at Billy the Kid in that dark bedroom, waiting for another sound to give them away. When the sound came again, it was to my right, a scuff on the floor. Someone was creeping round the perimeter of the room, towards me.
I backtracked, hugging the wall, moving clockwise as I pictured someone opposite doing the same.
A loud scrape bounced around the walls as furniture moved. There was a grunt close by, a rush of air as something moved quickly. I spun, dropping down, trying to home in on the sounds but they were moving too fast, whirling first this way then the other, like a trapped rat. A door slammed against the wall.
A tiny orange spark erupted in the black, growing into a flame that dazzled my light-starved eyes. I turned the gun on the flame, looking for something to aim at, when it disappeared just as abruptly.
I quickly rolled to my left, blinking rapidly, trying to clear the glowing spots from my vision. Someone was banging around; I was disorientated, and not sure which room they’d gone into.
On the basis they had tried to scarper, I decided to go for it, jumping up and walking quickly into the black until I felt the touch of the wall. The door was alongside it, so I put my ear against it and listened. The faintest orange glow showed below the door from inside the room, as if there was a small fire starting on the other side. The White Demon, the Fireman.
I felt for the handle to open inwards. With one movement, I pushed it, crouched, swinging round the frame into the room and bringing my gun to bear on the flame. I clicked on the torch, brighter than the sun in the enclosed space, holding it alongside the pistol.
Details swum into focus rapidly, as my brain made sense of the scene even as my finger squeezed the trigger. Shelving, boxes, big old computers and files and papers. A figure crouched behind a desk, readying to pounce, knife in hand. I flicked my hand to the side as the Glock kicked.
The explosion was deafening in the enclosed space, setting my ears ringing. The figure was shouting, obscenities no doubt, due to her own ears ringing and the plaster fragments spraying from the bullet impact centimetres from her face.
Abi dropped her lighter and knife, throwing her hands up and dropping to the floor.
I rushed forward to catch her. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Fuck me sideways, is that how you greet a friend?’
Chapter Twenty-eight
Severnaya Zemlya, Siberia
Present day
‘Why the hell are you creeping around down here?’ I asked Abi.
‘Because, Tyler, there’s a bunch of really pissed off Russkies on a short fuse up there.’
‘Fair enough. Wait, you called me Tyler.’
‘Why do you think I’m down here?’ She picked up her knife and dusted herself down. ‘I overheard them talking about you. Your mate killed Balakin and you’re taking the rap.’
‘So what’s it to you? You work for Golubev.’
‘How long do you think it’ll be before someone puts two and two together, eh?’
‘On what?’
‘Look, Alice killed Professor Balakin, and probably the others, for all I know. But she didn’t kill Volkov, did she? She was in the party in full view of everyone.’
‘We don’t know who killed—’
‘Shut up, you silly bastard. I know you killed him.’
People often say they were taken aback, but I fair jumped, shocked into silence.
‘I waited outside,’ she continued. ‘I saw you come out.’
‘So why didn’t you say…’
‘He was a sadistic son of a bitch. Kill you as soon as look at you, he got what he deserved as far as I’m concerned. I saved your arse, so you can get me out of here.’
‘Listen up, and listen very carefully. I can rebuild a car, pretty much fly a plane, maybe not land it, but I can sail, dive, ski, snowboard, skateboard and play drums. I know how to lie, cheat and steal. I can pick most doors and forge most documents. Most of all, I know how to kill.
‘What I have never been any good at is keeping people alive. I’ve tried, God knows, but unfortunately for you, today’s probably not the day I’ll start. Thank you very much for coming to help me, I would love to repay you someday, but right now I’m on my own.’
‘And where would you be without me?’
I held up my hands. ‘I’m grateful for the help but I was on my way out anyway.’
‘You’d have been dead long ago,’ she said, walking to the door. ‘Golubev sent men to search your room. Fortunately for you, I’d already moved Volkov’s body. Fucker wasn’t light, I’ll tell you that. Wasn’t easy hauling him down the back stairs and round the hotel without being seen, but I couldn’t let you get caught, don’t you see? You’re one of the good guys, so I don’t give a fuck if you see yourself as some kind of brooding lone wolf action man, you’re gonna repay me by getting me the fuck outta here.’
‘Hang on, that’s a shitload to unpack.’
‘Well, unpack it fast because we’ve gotta get a move on.’
‘You moved the body from my room?’
‘Unpack faster.’ She elbowed past me through the door. ‘You coming or what? This is a rescue.’ She beckoned me to follow up the stairs.
‘I need my gear.’
‘No time, come on.’
I followed her through the tunnels, snatching my HK pistol from where it still sat on the chair in the centre of the room. We ran up the stairs by the bouncing light of my torch. As we neared the top, she put a finger to her lips and motioned for me to switch it off.
A soft glow fell through the hole in the steel door. Abi pushed herself through it then waved back to me. I followed, immediately recoiling as I had to step over two bodies. One lay on his back, a pool of blood from his neck still glistening in the light of his dropped torch. The other had slumped against the wall next to him, beneath an artful arterial spray.
‘You’re not just an engineer, are you?’ I asked, staring down at the bodies.
