Chet’s voice rang clearly in Sean’s earpiece. Situated near the eastern wing of the house, Sean was about twenty metres from the back door, just behind a metre-high wall that marked the end of a back yard. His right knee was pressed firmly into the snow, the butt of his rifle was tight into his shoulder and the weapon was trained on the exit. Marty was in the same position, another ten metres along the wall. Fifteen metres behind them both was a line of tall spruce trees, heavy with snow. Both men had their NV goggles engaged, and the IR-filtered Maglites on their weapons lit up the area in a ghostly green haze, for them but for no one else. Not that there
was
anyone else. The whole place was as silent as a graveyard.
Something nagged at Sean. It was so quiet here. He knew these fuckers were in hiding, but still . . .
He spoke into his mike. ‘Go careful, fellas.’
‘Roger that, buddy,’ Luke’s voice came over the radio.
Sean suppressed a shiver. Chet and Luke were good, but the anxiety still gnawed at him. This op should be like shooting fish in a barrel. Marty looked over at Sean briefly before returning his gaze to the house. He couldn’t see the younger soldier’s eyes but he could sense that the kid was anxious too.
Sean thought back through the events of the past hour. He had seen Ivanovic’s man staggering out of the bar. From the white Skoda he had watched the guy weave along the pavement, pissed as a parrot. Once in the Transit van, he’d pulled carelessly out into the traffic and sped off.
Sped off.
Sean remembered the few times he’d been drunk behind the wheel, back when he was a teenager in Salisbury. He’d never driven quickly. A drunk man drives slowly, he thought. He doesn’t want to get caught . . .
And once they’d dumped their vehicles and approached the location on foot, the Transit van’s tracks had been perfectly straight. It was not the haphazard route of a drunk man. Not like a drunk man at all . . .
An icy chill clenched Sean’s stomach.
It was a set-up. They had to abort. Now.
He moved his hand down to his pocket, ready to activate the comms and hiss the warning into his mike.
He never got the chance.
He heard it at the same time as he saw it: a distant thud from behind, like someone knocking once on a wooden door. And the moment of impact, as a round slammed with fatal precision into the back of Marty’s neck, just below the helmet. There was a small explosion of gore, not only at the entry point but also at the exit wound at the front of the throat, and Marty’s body slumped dead.
Sean spun round. The Maglite lit up the area between him and the spruces behind, and he scanned the line of trees, desperately trying to make out the shooter. As the IR torch moved from left to right, it illuminated a face in the darkness. Sean only saw it for a fraction of a second, but he knew it well enough: the hooded eyes, the huge flat nose. The man from the bar. Only now he had a rifle, and it was pointing straight at Sean.
The SAS man’s movements were lightning fast as he swung his M16 back to where he’d seen the image, ready to take him out the moment he got the fucker in his sights.
That moment never came.
The second bullet entered just below Sean’s forehead with the same accuracy as the first, mincing the upper half of his face. He fell to the ground.
He’d had no chance to warn Chet and Luke that they were walking into an ambush.
The front door was open. Chet and Luke slipped quietly into the house.
It was as silent inside as out. They found themselves in a hallway about six metres long, with an old wooden floor, a door on either side and one at the far end. Chet pointed at the left-hand door first. Luke covered him while he tried the handle. Locked. The same went for the right-hand door. They crept towards the far door.
Chet opened it and Luke entered, scanning the place with the IR beam from his Maglite.
It was a big room. Seven or eight metres square. It smelt of neglect and there was no furniture – Luke sensed that the house had long since been abandoned – but at the far end there were two open staircases, one leading up to the first floor, the other leading into the basement. In that far wall, under the upper staircase, was a further door. Chet pointed at the door to indicate to Luke that they would clear the adjoining room before investigating the rest of the house, then stepped towards it.
Movement.
Luke swung round to his left but at first saw nothing. A couple of seconds later, though, his sight fell on a fat rat, close against the left-hand wall and looking up at them with eyes that glowed in the NV. Luke cursed silently to himself, then continued towards the door.
The adjoining room was bigger than the one with the stairs. On the left-hand wall was a large fireplace, and as Chet and Luke stepped further into the room, they saw a child’s cot standing against the far wall and a hobby horse to its right.
But no people.
Nothing.
‘
FRAG!
’
Chet’s voice shattered the silence. Luke saw an object, the size of a spray paint can, falling towards him.
Two metres away.
One.
It all happened so quickly. Seconds later Luke felt the full force of Chet’s bulky body smash into him, knocking him towards the edge of the room and forcing him off balance. As he fell to one side, he saw his mate try to kick the fragmentation grenade back out of the door, towards whoever had thrown it at them. It exploded just at the moment his boot touched the canister.
The explosion echoed round the room, and Luke’s reflex action was to hit the ground and clasp his hands at the back of his neck to stop the falling shrapnel from embedding itself in his flesh. He felt something shower on to his helmet, but by some miracle none of the shrapnel pierced his body.
He also heard Chet’s scream. It sounded all the louder since they had spent the last forty-five minutes in near silence.
Luke pushed himself to his knees and instinctively let a couple of rounds from his rifle fly towards the open door. Then he turned his attention to Chet.
No casualty simulation exercise could ever have prepared Luke for the state of his friend. Chet’s right leg had taken the brunt of the detonation. The grenade had burned the material of his trouser leg away, but that was not all. Flesh had been blasted away from the leg in chunks, and through the grainy haze of his NV, Luke could see splinters of bone and torn flesh. Chet’s body armour had absorbed the force of some of the blast, but the fragments had peppered his face – the skin was punctured, mangled and bleeding.
He was writhing in agony, flailing like a landed fish, and was crying out so loudly that he was already hoarse.
Luke fired another two rounds through the open door, then screamed into his radio: ‘
I need backup.
Now!
’
No response.
‘
Sean, Marty?
’
Nothing.
‘
Shit!
’
Either the comms were down, or the rest of his unit were.
Voices outside. Several men, shouting instructions at each other in Serbian. They were mobilising themselves. They were coming.
Chet needed morphine, and he needed it now. Luke had two shots, safely in their plastic casing, attached to a cord round his neck. He grabbed one of them, then slammed it through his mate’s clothing and into the top of his left thigh. He could feel the needle piercing the skin, and for a moment he wondered whether he should go for a second shot. Chet was fucked, but at least the drugs would make him more comfortable until . . . Until what?
Luke was just reaching for the second jab when the first round flew over his head and splintered the hobby horse behind him. He felt the rush of displaced air and threw himself down on the ground. Suddenly the enemy were there. In the darkness and confusion, it was difficult to tell how many. Three, maybe four, and armed – Luke thought he caught sight of an MP5 Kurz. They were shouting at him, a harsh, guttural sound. Luke made to spray a burst of rounds into them, but a heavy boot hit his rifle and knocked it from his hands. The Serbians started to pile in. They kicked Luke in the face and groin; the NV goggles cracked and were then ripped off him. One of the men grabbed the rifle. Two others seized him by the arms and hauled him to his feet. Luke felt one of them cut his ops waistcoat away from his body, before he was pushed, roughly and at gunpoint, towards the door.
‘
Get down the stairs!
’
The instruction came in harshly accented English, and Luke felt a gun barrel in the back of his neck. Chet’s screaming had stopped. Bad sign.
Luke twisted his head to see what was going on behind him, but that just earned him another push. ‘
Get down the fucking stairs or I kill you now . . .
’
Luke stumbled in the darkness. In the adjoining room he bore left towards the lower staircase. At the top he looked towards his captors, but they were just shapes in the darkness. Shapes with MP5s, and Luke didn’t doubt for a moment that they were willing to use them. What he didn’t understand was why they hadn’t killed him yet.
Another bad sign.
One more push and Luke stumbled down the stairs. He tried to work out his options. His rifle was gone, and so was his waistcoat. The only weapon he had was the disco gun strapped to his ankle. The Serbians hadn’t found that yet, but if he went for it now, chances were they’d nail him before he even stood up again. He was just going to have to bide his time.
He reached the bottom of the stairs. ‘
Keep going!
’ the voice behind him ordered. He found himself in a damp-smelling cellar room. Candles were burning – perhaps half a dozen of them – but they weren’t bright enough to light up the walls, so Luke couldn’t tell how big this place was.
But what he could tell was that somebody was waiting for him.
Even in the dim candlelight, Luke recognised the man from the photo the ops officer had shown them back at base. The almost-bald head, a few strands combed from one side to the other. The flared nostrils. The sour look. Stevan Ivanovic stared at Luke with something approaching satisfaction.
Suddenly there was silence again. Shadows from the candles danced on Ivanovic’s face.
‘Get on the ground,’ he whispered as one of his men threw something on the floor. For a moment Luke thought it was just his waistcoat, but then he realised it was Chet’s gear. They’d removed it all. He didn’t even want to think what they’d done to his mate.
His mind turned somersaults as he let his head fall to his chest.
Let the fucker think he’s the big man, he thought. Let him think I’m beaten. He refused to admit to himself that he probably was.
It was only as Luke lowered himself down to his knees that he noticed what Ivanovic had in his hands. A loop of thin plastic. The former police chief was running it through his fingers. Caressing it, almost.
‘You British,’ Ivanovic said, his voice very soft. ‘You think you can interfere in
everybody’s
affairs. You think you still boss the whole world, like you used to.’
Luke kept silent. His head hung. Here, in the kneeling position, his hand was nearer his PPK, but he knew he had to choose his moment carefully.
Ivanovic smiled. It was a cold, humourless expression. ‘That . . . that
pantomime
in the bar. It was very clumsy. The young man is dead now. And his girlfriend.’ Another smile. ‘Well, almost. Oh, and your two friends.’ He nodded, his eyes suddenly bright. ‘
Mrtav
. Dead.’
Ivanovic turned his back on Luke and appeared to address the empty rear portion of the room. ‘I am lucky to have such loyal men. But you know, really it seems not fair that they should have
all
the fun.’
To Luke’s right stood two men with MP5s pointed directly at him. They handled their weapons like pros. Beyond them he counted three others. He tried to identify the guy from the bar, but he couldn’t. That meant he was still out there somewhere.
One of him, six of them – and that was just down here. Not good odds.
Ivanovic turned to face him again. Luke noticed his hands trembling, as if in excitement. As he took a step nearer, Luke saw he held a cable tie – exactly what he himself had stashed in his waistcoat for use as Plasticuffs. He knew what these Eastern European fucks did with them. The skin round his neck tingled.
Ivanovic said something that made his men laugh. Luke closed his eyes. The moment he went for his PPK, the guards would shoot. But if he didn’t, Ivanovic would throttle him. Maybe he should let that happen. Once the cable tie was on, Ivanovic and his guys would be off their guard. He could nail them and then hunt for a knife, but he wouldn’t have much more than a minute to find one . . .
‘I can give you information . . .’ he said hoarsely. It was bullshit, but it might buy him some time.
Ivanovic appeared to find this very funny. ‘Information? I knew already you were coming. What information could
you
. . . ?’