No Survivors (29 page)

Platon knew that, all right. Zhukovski had made a fortune flogging land mines until that English princess had stuck her interfering nose in his business. That had been the death of her . . . and of him, too. Since then, as political pressure against them grew, the mines had been rotting in warehouses all over Russia. But the illicit demand for them was unabated. Mines sold by the tens of thousands, and each one was worth three hundred U.S. dollars in pure profit. If he could secure the concession, there was a massive fortune to be made.

“I would be proud to assist my country, but it will not be easy,” he said. “I must take my best men away from their current assignments. They will need equipment. And of course we must all get to the property as fast as possible. A helicopter will be the fastest method. The French make one called a Dauphin. It will easily seat six men and take us all the way there, right to the front door, with just one refueling stop. If I can charter one this morning, I can be at this place by early afternoon.”

As it turned out, Platon’s takeoff was delayed. The chopper he hired had technical problems. It was not until lunchtime that the Eurocopter Dauphin left the Paris heliport and began the three-hour flight south.

T
here had been a number of problems confronting Carver as he tried to work out how to get the document Vermulen wanted from the house where Bagrat Baladze was keeping it. For a start, he was not a professional thief, unlike Kenny Wynter, the man he was impersonating. He did not know where in the building the document was hidden, and the only method he knew of opening a safe was blowing it up: not such a smart idea if you wanted to preserve a flimsy cardboard folder filled with bits of paper. And, of course, there were six potential opponents—because he couldn’t assume that the women would be useless in combat—and only one of him.

Of these considerations, the last was the least significant. Given the element of surprise and a properly planned assault, he could soon even the odds. He’d done it often enough before. But he wasn’t there to kill people. He was there to steal. So he worked through the problem logically, considering all the possible permutations, until he came to a solution that made sense. Which was why he needed his shopping list. That, and a working knowledge of basic chemistry as it applied to the art of sabotage.

The logic was simple. The simplest way of getting the document out of the house was to make Bagrat Baladze do the work for him. Pondering that led Craver inexorably to the chemical properties of the substances on his list.

Linseed oil, for example, is prone to spontaneous combustion, as painters and decorators—not to mention their clients—sometimes learn, at their own cost. When the oil is exposed to air, it oxidizes and releases heat. The greater the exposure, the greater the heat generated. If the linseed is spread thinly across a relatively large area of cotton rag, that maximizes exposure, and so the heat rises. Over a period of approximately six hours, the rags can reach a temperature of more than 430 degrees Centigrade, some 800 degrees Fahrenheit, which is enough to produce a flame.

But there’s a catch. If there’s too little ventilation, the oxidation process is greatly reduced. If there’s too much, the flow of air around the rags simply disperses any heat it creates. It’s just like blowing on a fire. Stifle it and it dies. Blow too hard and you blow it right out. You’ve got to get the balance just right.

The ideal between too much and too little air is to place linseed-soaked rags in an open container. An empty paint can is perfect.

Aquarium pellets have equally potent chemical properties. Their job is to freshen up water by producing oxygen, and their active ingredient is potassium chlorate, an extremely efficient oxidizing agent. Just as with linseed oil, this oxidization produces energy in the form of heat. If the release of energy is sufficiently powerful, it creates an explosion. Potassium chlorate is a very effective oxidizer, which explains why it is also an active ingredient in many homemade explosives, whether formulated by fireworks hobbyists or homicidal terrorists. Carver had ground down the tablets using a pestle and mortar and then mixed the resulting powder with sugar, which would burn to produce a bigger, brighter bang.

He had poured the mix into the bottom of an opened, emptied bag of potato chips, replaced the chips, and glued the bag back together. Then he prepared the bottle of “orange juice,” which actually consisted of acetone—bought from the same hardware store where he’d found the rest of the painter’s supplies—orange food dye, and, once again, sugar. Acetone is an extremely highly flammable liquid whose vapors can explode on exposure to a spark. Among sugar’s properties is that it caramelizes under heat, becoming extremely sticky. So the addition of sugar to this sort of bottle bomb, or Molotov cocktail, causes the flame to adhere to its target, much like napalm.

Carver didn’t have to add anything to the paint thinner or the oil paint. They would be fine just as they were.

His painter’s bag and its contents were, essentially, a self-detonating incendiary bomb. Once they were in place, Carver had ridden back to the village in the baker’s van, checked out of his hotel, and driven back up the mountain, this time by the scenic route. He made a second trek across the mountainside to his observation post, now carrying the equipment that Vermulen’s people had delivered to the
poste restante,
as per instructions. After that, he’d just waited.

By midday, the air temperature had risen into the high seventies. The women sunned themselves with the gratitude of northern Europeans released at the end of a cold, dark winter. The men went shirtless, revealing torsos covered in the tattoos that are an essential mark of status in Russian gangland culture. The dogs lazed in their cage, their laid-back demeanor caused less by the hot sun on their fur than the large quantities of Valium—fifty milligrams crushed and mixed with the pâté in each of their sandwiches—coursing through their bloodstreams.

The humans lunched late, at around two in the afternoon. They drank heavily with their meal. By half past three, George had taken over sentry duty by the gate. Bagrat and Linda had gone back indoors for sex and a snooze. Everyone else was flopped semicomatose by the pool. That was when Carver saw the first wisps of smoke coming from his canvas bag.

He texted Vermulen’s number: “Delivery 19:00 in bar as planned.” Carver spelled the words in full. He regarded text-speak as infantile twaddle and presumed a retired general would feel the same way. Thinking about it, he doubted whether Vermulen had ever before in his life been obliged to use text at all.

By the time he’d finished, a flame was clearly visible. He’d painted the inside of his bag with linseed, too, just to add to the effect. Once the spark caught, it would quickly spread.

There was a sudden, sharp crack, a shattering of glass, and a whoosh of flame as the bottle of cleanser cracked open and its contents ignited. From there it was a chain reaction. The flame from the cleanser lit the bag of chips, which then went off with an explosive fizz, like a Roman candle. That shattered the drink bottle, releasing a fireball of acetone and sugar, which in turn set the bone-dry logs aflame.

Carver was already wearing his bulletproof vest, with his pistol holstered below it. The loaded grenade launcher was slung around his back. The baton was in his hip pocket. The wax plugs had been stuffed deep into his ears. His hands, encased in tight leather gloves, were holding his gas mask. It would be the last thing to go on.

By now the woodshed was completely ablaze, the flames dancing up the side of the house. A first-floor window was open, and the fire caught on the wooden shutters and window frames and the nylon net curtains rippling in the hot currents of air generated by the fire. The flames slipped into the room beyond as stealthily as a cat burglar. Above them, the massive oak beams under the eaves of the tile roof began to smolder. It would not be long before they, too, added to the conflagration.

I
t was the sentry, down by the gate, who realized what was happening first. Carver watched George’s reaction as he saw the smoke rising over the top of the house and dashed back up the hill, shouting at the top of his voice. By the pool, Paul slowly raised himself to one elbow to see what had caused the commotion, took a few seconds to process what he was seeing, then sprang to his feet and screamed at Ringo to wake up. Yoko started shrieking. The three men raced around the side of the house. They disappeared from Carver’s view for a few seconds, then reappeared on the ground behind the house, where they stood, pointing at the fire, backing away from the flames and shouting at one another.

A window was flung open above the kitchen and Bagrat stuck out his head. Carver could see the look of horror on his face as he saw the blaze and then watched the expression turn to panic as the Georgian looked down at the propane-gas cylinders beneath him. If they exploded, they could take half the building with him. He screamed a series of orders at the three men, threw a set of keys out of the house onto the ground in front of the men, then ducked back inside.

Carver’s entire plan hinged on what Bagrat did next, but he didn’t have time to wait and see what would happen. He had to get moving and hope that his enemy’s logic was the same as his own.

Down below, the men had split into two groups. George and Ringo were frantically trying to disconnect the propane cylinders and drag them away from the fire. This wasn’t good. Carver wanted the men well out of the way. He’d assumed they’d make a dash for the front of the house, away from the threat of the fire. Paul had picked up the keys from the dirt and was moving toward the Shogun. Carver had planned to hit the Georgians when they gathered together in a group in front of the burning house. As any normal people would do.

Time for an instant rethink.

He pulled on his gas mask and scrambled down the hillside, charging through the undergrowth as fast as he could, heedless of the noise he was making. He knew the men’s attention would be fully focused on the fire.

He was making for a point on the boundary wall halfway between the gas tanks and the carport, almost exactly opposite the fire. The wall was about seven feet tall. It felt just like being back on the marines’ assault course as Carver leapt up, grabbed the top of the wall, scrambled for purchase with his feet, then propelled himself, rolling over the top and down the other side.

The moment his feet touched the ground, he reached for the grenade launcher and fired twice: the first round toward the car, the second at the canisters. Two plumes of white gas belched from the grenades, trapping the three men in thick clouds that burned their eyes and rasped their throats. The Georgians staggered, dizzy, disoriented, and retching, as Carver came at them out of the smoke, swinging his steel riot baton at their defenseless skulls and necks with ruthless brutality.

The men by the canisters were his first targets. When they were downed and unconscious, he went for the one by the car, beating him to his knees, where he doubled over with coughs and dry vomits until Carver laid him out on the ground with a vicious kick to the side of the head.

But where were the car keys? They weren’t in the hands of the unconscious gang member, nor the lock of the car. Now Carver had to fall to the ground and fumble around in the smoke, staring through the clear plastic bubble of his gas mask as his hands scrabbled across the dust and debris on the ground. It seemed an age before his fingers closed around the plastic key ring and he could get back up to his feet and make for the Shogun.

He turned on the ignition and gunned it, accelerating down the drive and then slewing left into the small graveled forecourt in front of the house. Bagrat was waiting there, with the two women. Yoko was still in her bikini, while Linda had fled the bedroom in nothing more than a pair of panties and a blanket, which was draped over her shoulders and clutched tight in front of her breasts. Bagrat was only marginally less exposed. Bare-chested and shoeless, he had nothing on but a pair of jeans. His right hand was clutching a gun. But the good news for Carver was the briefcase chained to Bagrat’s left wrist.

He saw it as he came around the corner and knew at once what had to be done. With his right hand on the wheel, he brought the Shogun to a skidding halt in a shower of gravel. At the same time, his left hand ripped one of the stun grenades from his vest. He pulled out the pin with his teeth and threw the hexagonal perforated-steel tube out of the car window, ducking his head, and closing his eyes tight shut as he did so.

The British Special Forces, for whom stun grenades were originally designed as means of overcoming hostage takers, always called them “flashbangs,” a name that means exactly what it says. The grenade detonated in front of the three Georgians with a scorching dazzle of light, equivalent to the glow from more than 100,000 standard sixty-watt domestic lightbulbs, just a few feet from their unprotected eyeballs. At the same time it emitted a sound blast eight times as loud as a fighter plane’s jet engine. Carver was expecting it and had taken precautions, but even he was stunned for a few seconds. Bagrat and the two women were poleaxed.

The two women were sitting on the ground with vacant, zombielike expressions on their sightless, deaf faces. Linda’s blanket had fallen from her body, but she was completely indifferent to or simply unaware of her exposure.

Bagrat was barely any better. He was on his knees and trying to get to his feet, though his limbs seemed unwilling to obey his instructions. His gun was weaving to and fro in his hand as he swung his torso around from one side to the other, blindly trying to seek out his attacker. Suddenly, the gun went off and a bullet smashed through the Shogun’s rear windows. Carver came to his senses fast, kicking open the door and falling to the ground. He scrambled across the gravel toward Bagrat, keeping as low as he could as the gun fired three more random, aimless shots. One fizzed over Carver’s head. Another ricocheted off the steps that led from the house down to the pool. The third caught Linda full in the throat, ripping through her windpipe and lodging in her spinal cord. She was thrown onto her back by the impact and lay there helplessly as the blood spurted from her gaping, gurgling wound.