He glanced casually at his flight instruments for a quick check, but he rarely paid too much real attention to them. For him, flying was more about instincts than dials and levels. It was, and always had been, his life, and he did his job with a confidence born from long familiarity. In his experience, worse things happened on firm ground than in thin air.
He popped open a can of his favourite German beer and took a long swig. Wiping foam from his chin, he offered the two other men in the cockpit a can each from the six-pack. The co-pilot grabbed one and had a similarly long drink. The navigator, boring as always, turned down the offer.
Both drinkers belched happily.
Ten thousand feet below, two Afghan men with binoculars stood on a mountainside. Despite the hot sun it was cold twelve thousand feet above sea level and they wore Pakol hats and long coats to stay warm. Their binoculars were American-made and donated by the military to be used by the then-Northern Alliance. The Taliban had long been overthrown, but the Afghans had kept their useful gifts. A donkey stood nearby, chewing dry grass.
‘That’s it,’ one said and lowered his binoculars. ‘Heading this way.’
The other Afghan nodded. ‘Right on schedule.’
The Stinger was already set up and waiting, carefully leaning against a nearby boulder. The older Afghan handled it easily and hoisted the weapon on to his shoulder. It was just under five feet in length and weighed thirty-three pounds. The Afghan’s proudest moment was when he had last used a Stinger to shoot down a Soviet Hind helicopter gunship during the late eighties. This feat was still talked about today, and the young were awed whenever he told the increasingly exaggerated tale. Of the hundreds of Stingers supplied to the Mujahideen during the conflict with the Soviets, around sixty per cent had been purchased back by the US as part of a fifty-five-million-dollar programme. This Stinger was part of the forty per cent unaccounted for.
The Afghan inserted a battery coolant unit into the hand guard and pressed a button. Nothing happened. Cursing, but not surprised, the Afghan released the battery and was handed another by the second man, who had spare batteries ready and waiting. Again, nothing happened when he pushed the button. The Stinger and its launcher were decades old and all of the original battery coolant units had ceased working after a few years. These units had been recently supplied, but were still far from brand new. The Afghan inserted a third battery into the hand guard and this time it worked correctly, spraying argon gas into the launcher tube to cool the missile’s seeker head, making it sensitive enough to infrared to stay on target.
The Antonov grew larger in the sky as it neared the two Afghans.
It took a few seconds for the gyro spin-up to complete and electronics to activate, during which time the Afghan removed the protective lens cap from the end of the launcher and set his eye to the sighting scope. The field of view was narrow and he searched the sky to locate the plane.
‘To your right,’ the second Afghan said to help, ‘and up.’
The older Afghan adjusted the launcher as directed. ‘I’ve got him.’
A second later, he heard the distinctive tone telling him the seeker had locked on to the target.
The Afghan could taste sweat on his lips as he super-elevated the weapon by aiming it almost vertical. This ensured the launched missile
would gain sufficient altitude before the main motor fired. If it didn’t, the back blast could take off the user’s face. The Afghan had seen it happen.
He depressed the trigger and 1.7 seconds later the launch rocket propelled the missile out of the tube. The launch engine fell away from the ascending missile and the forward control fins and fixed tailfins extended. At a height of twenty feet, the solid-fuelled main motor ignited.
A huge roar and plume of vapour emanated from the missile and within two seconds the Stinger missile had accelerated to over twice the speed of sound.
‘
What the hell is that?
’
The co-pilot’s voice snapped the Ukrainian pilot from his thoughts of home and his wife’s ample bottom. He had been lounging in his seat, one hand on the controls, and dropped his can as he straightened up to look where the co-pilot was pointing. German beer sloshed across the cockpit’s floor. The pilot’s eyes widened in disbelief at the fiery speck in the distance, trailing smoke and vapour that arched down towards the mountains.
Behind the pilot, the navigator was on his feet. ‘Is that—’
‘
Yes
,’ the pilot snapped in answer as he grabbed hold of the controls and heaved them back towards him. ‘That’s exactly what it is, and it’s heading right for us.’
‘How long until it hits?’ the navigator frantically said as the fiery speck quickly grew larger.
The pilot didn’t answer. He concentrated on pulling on the controls to make the Antonov climb.
The navigator screamed, ‘
Turn us around
.’
Again the pilot didn’t respond. The plane’s maximum speed was four hundred and sixty miles per hour but they were cruising at around three hundred. He watched the speedometer slowly turn clockwise, the acceleration tempered by the climb, knowing that even if the Antonov was already at maximum speed there was no way he was going to outrun a missile travelling at more than double that speed.
‘
Turn us around
,’ the navigator screamed again. ‘Why aren’t you turning us around?’
‘Shut up and sit down,’ the pilot yelled back. ‘I’m trying to save your life.’
From his time in the Soviet air force the pilot knew that ground-to-air missiles had limited ranges and a comparatively low maximum ceiling. His only hope was to get the Antonov to an altitude where the missile, for all its speed, wouldn’t be able to reach.
The two Afghans watched the ever-lengthening trail of white vapour shoot across the sky. The trail was a jagged curve of straight lines as the Stinger’s guidance system used proportional navigation to make adjustments to its flight path, plotting a course to where the Antonov was heading so that it could intercept it.
‘Why is the plane doing that?’ the younger Afghan asked as they saw the Antonov climb steeply.
The older Afghan wasn’t sure, but he didn’t want to look ignorant in front of the youngster and so answered, ‘They’re scared.’
‘Will it still hit?
The older man said, ‘I don’t miss.’
They watched as the missile sped towards the Antonov, its passive infrared seeker locked on to the heat from the aircraft’s engines. In less than three seconds it had closed the distance.
The Stinger hit the Antonov’s starboard wing between the two engines and its three-kilogram warhead detonated. The wing was ripped in half by the explosion and the detached section tumbled earthward.
The pilot wrestled with the controls. His clenched teeth bit through the unlit cigar and it fell into his lap. The whole plane shook violently and he fought to keep it level. The altimeter needle turned counterclockwise.
‘
We’ve lost engine number three
,’ the co-pilot yelled. ‘
Engine number two is on fire
.’
‘Deactivate it,’ the pilot said.
The co-pilot operated the controls to shut down the burning engine.
‘Shit,’ the pilot said as he watched the altimeter swinging ever more rapidly counterclockwise.
The ropey muscles in the pilot’s arms were hard, his knuckles white, tendons straining beneath the skin. The co-pilot was similarly fighting with his own set of controls.
‘We’re not going to make it,’ he said, and looked to the pilot for a counterargument. He didn’t get one.
When the altimeter hit fifteen thousand feet the pilot said, ‘We’re going to crash. Prepare for emergency landing.’
Below them the mountains of the Hindu Kush were huge, imposing and very close. Fifteen thousand feet above sea level was only five thousand feet clear of the mountains. The pilot desperately tried to guide the Antonov towards a valley where he might just be able to put it down safely. But the plane wasn’t responding.
‘
Fourteen thousand feet
,’ the co-pilot yelled.
The Ukrainian pilot blinked sweat away from his eyes. Behind him the navigator was screaming, but the pilot ignored him. All his focus was on making it over the next ridgeline. Maybe on the other side there would be somewhere to crash-land. Maybe.
‘Thirteen thousand.’
The mountain seemed to shoot up before them. The pilot pulled on the controls with all his strength. He felt something tearing in his arm but refused to give up the fight despite the pain.
‘Twelve thousand feet.’
The mountain filled the view from the cockpit.
‘
WE’RE NOT GOING TO MAKE IT
.’
The pilot closed his eyes.
The Afghans watched through their binoculars as the Antonov’s underbelly clipped the ridgeline, crumpled, and spectacularly tore apart. An instant later its aviation fuel caught light and the ensuing monstrous explosion tossed the wreckage across the sky.
The two Afghans clapped and cheered as burning chunks of fuselage rained down over the mountainside.
Lavarone, Italy
The Alps were a good place to lay low. Mountains always were. By definition they were remote and light on people. There were countless places to hide. With his mountaineering, climbing and survival skills, Victor could exploit the terrain and climate, turning them to his advantage and against any enemies. He liked the scenery too, the peacefulness, the sense of isolation. Adrianna would have loved the area, and had Victor not being lying low, he might have invited her to join him.
The Lavarone plateau was located in the north-east of the country. It was a lush, rural area of several small towns and villages. There were a little over one thousand residents spread across eleven square miles of woods and pastures. Tourists and passers through were common enough for Victor to blend in. Three international borders lay within one hundred miles.
He had a room at the Albergo Antico in the centre of town. It was the perfect kind of establishment to hide out in for a few days; big enough to have some anonymity, but not so big as to lose track of who else was staying; modern enough for decent amenities, but not so modern as to have security cameras everywhere. The lobby was strictly functional, not the kind of open space where people could just hang around. The location was good too. From his window, he could see the street outside and the main highway passed straight by. Again, not the kind of place where people would loiter without a reason. The proximity to the highway would also aid him in a fast exit if it was needed. The modest rates meant the bribes he paid to the desk clerks were particularly reasonable. Separately, he asked them to let him know if
anyone enquired about him, directly or otherwise. The food also happened to be excellent, which always helped make laying low a little easier.
Victor had been in Italy for two days and in Lavarone for one, which he’d primarily spent in a paddleboat on the lake and then visiting the huge Belevedere-Gschwent. He’d read about the fortress before and he rarely gave up the chance to see a part of military history if the opportunity presented itself. The Belevedere-Gschwent and its museum also made a good place for drawing out shadows, but he’d seen no one suspicious since arriving in the country.
Victor didn’t know what to expect, but expecting the worst came both easily and naturally. Hoping for the best was a privilege reserved for regular citizens and dead assassins. There was an even keener edge to his counter surveillance and precautionary measures than usual. The failure of the Yamout contract was never far from his thoughts, in particular the fact his failure was due to the intervention of a third party. A third party that he had been forced to kill four of and who had shot him in return. He rubbed his arm. Still sore. The injury wasn’t too much of a problem, but what the surveillance team’s employers might do in response was far more serious.
He’d destroyed their laptop on which they had recorded him via hidden cameras in the Presidential Suite, but there would be backups of those recordings, he was sure. They had been too skilled in combat to be poor at surveillance. Whoever they worked for would have Victor’s face, his voice, and could at this very moment be tracking him down. The encounter with Petrenko’s men at the train station would give any pursuers even more intelligence on him.
Petrenko wouldn’t be a problem. Victor had left the Belarusian far too scared to risk retribution. That took care of one potential enemy at least.
Which left his employer.
There was no internet café in Lavarone so Victor caught a bus to one of the larger, neighbouring towns. There he spent two hours performing counter surveillance before entering the lone establishment and sitting down in front of a computer. It was the first time he’d checked his CIA-supplied email account since before attempting the Yamout contract. As expected, there was a request to make contact for
a post-action report regarding Minsk. He’d missed the prearranged call, but this wasn’t commented on. The tone of the email was neutral, nothing to give away just how angry his paymaster was at Yamout’s survival. The voice wouldn’t be happy about it, that went without saying.
Victor rubbed his right triceps before typing a response, stating a time he would call. A few days without strenuous activity had done his wound some good and it was healing well. There had been no infection and the pain was gradually subsiding. He took no painkillers for it. Pain, despite its inherent negatives, was the best indicator he had of how the injury was healing.
He spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the towns and villages of the Lavarone plateau, taking buses and walking, occasionally chatting with the friendly locals about their beautiful region, but never truly relaxing.
Victor returned to his hotel after dark, a newly purchased compact laptop hidden in a backpack. In his room, he powered on the computer, connected to the hotel’s internet, downloaded and installed the required software, and called his paymaster.
‘What happened?’ the voice demanded.