PLEDGE OF HONOR: A Mark Cole Thriller (24 page)

‘Fuck . . .you . . .’ the man gasped, barely able to breathe from the pressure of Cole’s forearm against his throat, a pressure that increased immediately after his unhelpful answer.

‘I’ve got your boss here!’ Cole shouted to the men outside, above the sounds of Milanović choking for air. ‘Get in here and drop those weapons! Do it, or I’ll shoot him!’

Cole didn’t know if the men even understood English, but waited a few seconds to see what happened.

Cole noticed that Milanović was trying to speak, and he released the pressure on the man’s neck. As soon as he got air into his lungs, Milanović let out a stream of rapid Serbian, obviously orders to his men. Without knowing what he was saying, Cole was loathe to let it continue and shut it off again within a few seconds, re-securing his hold around the man’s neck.

‘Come on!’ Cole shouted. ‘I’m going to count to three!’ Cole paused for a moment before starting the countdown. ‘One!’ he began. Seconds ticked by, and nothing happened, just tentative, furtive movements from beyond the doorway. ‘Two!’

At almost the same moment as his count, Cole saw two objects flying into the room, recognized them instantly as flashbangs – special grenades designed to emit a deafening noise and a blinding flash of light and smoke, to disorientate people before attacking a room – and immediately closed his eyes, released Milanović and rendered him unconscious by smashing the butt of his MP7 into the side of his head.

The flashbangs went off, and the light was intense even with his eyes closed; the noise, too, was awesome – but not quite as effective when used on someone who was expecting it, and Cole decided that the only way he was going to win this was by doing the exact opposite of what the enemy expected.

They thought the flashbangs would lead to disorientation, maybe even capitulation – but instead, Cole charged through the smoke toward the doorway, just as the first two gunmen were entering.

Amazed to see him there in front of them, they had no time to react as Cole pumped two rounds into each of the men’s chests, dropping them on the spot.

And then he was through the doorway, noting targets and engaging them almost simultaneously, as thousands of hours of training had programmed him to do.

Target left, shoot; target left, shoot; target right, shoot; target after target, shot after shot, six men down in under four seconds, the bare concrete corridor empty now except for dead bodies, the warm air of their bullet-riddled corpses rising ominously up out of them as it met the cold of the basement corridor.

Cole breathed deeply, getting his heart rate back down, and noted the dark staircase over to the left. He bent down and picked up a new MP7 from one of the dead men, discarding his used one; checked that it was loaded and made ready, then stalked toward the stairs.

He crept up them carefully, not knowing what he would find at the top.

It angled to the right at a corner, and Cole made the turn quickly, weapon aimed forward – but it was clear, and Cole made his way to the top, which was closed off by a steel door.

Cole took a deep breath, reached for the handle and turned, bursting out of the doorway with the MP7 at the ready.

But it was just a decrepit building, the crumbling ruins of the camp’s central tower. There was nobody else to be seen, but Cole took a quick look around to double-check, then peered through the broken windows to see what was outside.

It was a rough, broken-down, weed-covered area, with some other old, half-ruined buildings scattered across a small compound. Some looked quasi-residential, and a couple even had washing lines suspended outside. There were a few old wrecks of cars near the houses, but no sign of any people.

A grassy area immediately outside the tower had three black sedans parked up. All new, and therefore almost certainly belonging to Milanović and his men. Like in Marseille, Mercedes was the manufacturer of choice, and Cole couldn’t help but wonder what it was about the three-pointed star that criminals loved so much.

He reasoned that the presence of the cars might very well be why there were no other people around – they probably knew to vacate the area when Milanović and his boys brought ‘guests’ here, unless they wanted to be invited downstairs themselves.

Finally satisfied that they weren’t going to be disturbed, Cole turned around and made his way back toward the staircase.

He had some questions he was going to ask Radomir Milanović.

And he wasn’t in the mood to ask them nicely.

16

Cole stood over the dead body of Radomir Milanović, absolutely stunned at what the man had told him.

It turned out that excessive force wasn’t necessary to get the man to talk; it was the hired muscle who were the force behind his enterprise, Milanović himself – although he liked to watch violence inflicted on others – being almost entirely incapable of dealing with pain.

After he’d talked though, Cole had killed him anyway; he had the information he wanted, and the world would be a better place without the arms broker in it. Who was he to judge? He’d decided that it no longer mattered – like Goran, he was perhaps something of an automaton, although rather than following the orders of others, he merely acted upon the powerful drive of his own internal moral compass. And that moral compass told him that to protect the innocents of the world, he had to remove the guilty; and if that made
him
guilty in turn, then so be it.

His mind was still processing what the man had told him, and what it meant, the possible ramifications, when he heard the sirens – first faintly, then louder and louder, until he was sure that there must be enough police cars up in the compound to completely fill it.

He thought that they might have been contacted by one of the local residents, and he decided to make the first move, running up the stairs to see what was going on rather than waiting back in the basement, surrounded by dead bodies. Even if the police were honest – unusual for this part of the world – the sight that would greet them downstairs might cause them to shoot Cole just as an instinctive reaction.

He arrived on the first floor, and saw the flashing lights through the broken windows. He wondered whether he should have brought one of the guns upstairs with him, but didn’t want to give them any excuse to shoot him.

But then again, could the police here be trusted? Or were they in league with Milanović, had he paid them off?

There must have been over two dozen of them though, and he soon realized he had no sort of choice anyway.

And so – reluctantly, given what he had just learnt from Milanović, and already trying to work out how he was going to get the word out from a Serbian jail cell – he strode out of the remains of the central tower towards the gathered police officers, hands held high in the air in surrender.

They’d not shot him, and for that, Cole would be forever grateful; but they
had
taken him to Belgrade’s central police station and stuck him in the cells, despite his requests to have someone from the US Embassy contact him immediately.

And then – perhaps an hour later – an officer came to his cell and told him in broken English that someone had come to see him. His heart leapt in his chest, and he hoped that it was someone from the embassy. If it was, he would have them make contact with Vinson – or Olsen, or dos Santos, or even the president herself. But he needed to get the word out quickly, to someone who could do something about it.

He was taken to an interview room, where he was told to take a seat. There was no coffee, no water, just a desk and two chairs. He remained handcuffed, and a police guard waited outside.

He waited for several minutes and then – just when he’d decided that they were playing mind games with him, and nobody was coming to see him at all – the door opened and in came someone who Cole recognized instantly, perhaps the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

Elizabeth Morgan, who he’d hoped had escaped Serbia altogether, was instead standing right there in front of him.

‘I’m so happy that you’re alive,’ Morgan breathed as she sat across from him. ‘What the hell happened to you?’

Cole told her, as briefly as he could, then started with questions of his own. ‘Never mind me,’ he said, ‘what happened to you? I thought you’d have hightailed it out of here. You
should
have.’

‘I couldn’t leave you,’ she said honestly, wide eyes boring into his. ‘When the rooms changed, I raced downstairs, grabbed the car and brought it over to the Crowne Plaza, waited in the parking lot until I saw something. I waited a little while, then I
did
see something – I saw
you
, two guys carrying you as if you’d passed out drunk and putting you in the back of a car. Three cars filled up with guys, and they all pulled out of the parking lot. I followed them for about half a mile, then pulled over when it looked obvious where they were going – I didn’t want to follow them all the way, in case they saw me. So I went the rest of the way on foot, saw the cars parked outside that tower, and made a decision.’

‘You called the police.’

Morgan nodded. ‘I did,’ she confirmed. ‘They just laughed at me at first though, told me to get lost. I wasn’t sure what to do, but in the end I decided it was worth the risk and used my credentials.’

‘You told them you were MI5?’ Cole asked, surprised. ‘Weren’t you worried they’d arrest you as a spy or something?’

But Morgan shook her head. ‘No, we’ve built up quite a good relationship with the Serbian authorities over the years, our cooperation goes back a long way although it’s something that people don’t like to talk about.’

‘Okay, but you’ve involved MI5 now, so they know where you are, everything we’ve done.’

‘That’s why I used my own personal ID for our travel, wasn’t it? So at least one of us would be official, so that anything we find can be validated.’

‘Yes,’ Cole agreed, ‘I guess so. But what did you tell them about me?’

‘They don’t know anything about you,’ Morgan said. ‘I told them I was here working independently, having heard rumors about Milanović and following up on them with some surveillance – this is what I told Kelly and Riley too, by the way – and then that I saw a group of armed men dragging an unconscious man from the hotel and driving him to Sajmište concentration camp. And then I demanded that they do something about it. Eventually, they did. The only reason they’ve let me in here now is to let me question you, to try and find out your link to Milanović, I’ve told them my superiors need to know who you are.’

‘Thank you,’ Cole said, looking at her earnestly, wishing he could take her hands in his across the table but instead trying to convey his gratitude through his eyes. He didn’t bother mentioning that he had already escaped, that her ‘rescue’ had actually done more harm than good – her intentions had been good, and in other circumstances the police might well have saved him. He also appreciated the predicament this had put her in, how she’d had to admit to being a foreign intelligence operative working in a non-aligned nation. In addition to her actions in London, the outlook for her future career wouldn’t be looking so great now, and she would have had to have known that.

And yet she had risked everything, to help save him.

‘I’m glad you’re okay,’ Cole said, unable to think of anything better, any words that would more honestly convey the depths of his feelings. But she seemed to understand him nevertheless, and she gave him a small smile, careful of the police officer who watched them through the armored glass of the door.

‘Me too,’ she said. ‘I was worried they might have killed you.’

‘No,’ Cole said, knowing how he would reward her now, killing two birds with one stone – allowing her the chance to redeem herself with her superiors in London, while at the same time getting the information he had out to his own people. ‘I’m fine, trust me. I could use a beer, though, I guess.’ She smiled again, and he looked at her more seriously. ‘But listen,’ he said. ‘Milanović talked. He told me everything.’

‘He talked?’ Morgan said excitedly, even as the guard knocked on the window and held up two fingers to indicate they only had two minutes left. ‘What did he say?’

‘He told me who ordered the weapons, gave me a name.’

‘Who?’

‘A man by the name of Mohammed Younesi.’

‘Younesi?’ Morgan asked. ‘I’ve heard that name before somewhere, I’m sure of it.’

‘Well, if you’ve ever spent any time on the Middle Eastern or South Asian desks, you probably have. He’s an operations officer with the Ministry of Intelligence.’ He paused for a moment before clarifying. ‘
Iran’s
Ministry of Intelligence.’

‘Iran?’ Morgan said with a gasp. ‘Then this whole thing has been state-sponsored?’

Cole nodded. ‘And I think there’s more, Milanović was convinced there’s going to be a secondary attack.’ He leaned closer and whispered. ‘And what disturbs me even more is that the weapons weren’t the only things that Milanović supplied to the Corsicans for them to ship over to England. Apparently the Iranians gave Milanović a crate, told him to send it over to Javid Khan along with the weapons.’

‘Any idea what was in it?’

Cole shook his head. ‘Even Milanović didn’t know,’ he said, then turned as the guard knocked again, held up a single finger. ‘Look,’ he said ‘there’s nothing else you can do for me here, you need to get this information out to your people – Kelly, Sir Riley, anyone else you can think of. And you’ve got to pass it to my people too, get this to Catalina dos Santos, okay? She’s the Director of National Intelligence, she’s in charge of everything intel-related, she’ll get it to the right people.’ As one of the only people who knew of Force One’s existence, dos Santos was therefore also one of the only people he trusted with this information.

‘I know I can’t help you get out of here,’ she said sadly, ‘and I’m sorry, I really am. I’ve been recalled to London anyway, I’ll get this out to the right people, don’t worry.’

Cole nodded. ‘Look, with state backing like this, we’re looking at one hell of a lot more organization than we thought. You’re going to have to make them cancel that memorial event on Sunday, it’s just too damn risky.’

‘I know,’ Morgan said, ‘I know. And trust me, I’ll do my best. But you know what they’re like, so pigheaded, they’ll want more evidence, they’ll put this down to hearsay.’

Cole nodded, hearing the door opening, turned to see the guard entering to escort him back to his cell. ‘I know,’ Cole said, ‘but you have to try.’ The guard took Cole by the arm, and he could see that Morgan was upset to see him go. He was upset to lose her too, but there were more important things at stake.

‘Promise me you’ll try,’ he called back over his shoulder as he was led out of the room, straining to look back at her one last time. ‘Promise me!’

‘I’ll do it!’ she called after him. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll do it!’

Her words gave him some comfort, and he knew that Morgan would do her best – she came after him against the odds, after all.

But, as he was taken back down the corridor toward his cell, he knew he couldn’t leave it entirely up to her. She’d been right about one thing, he knew – despite the danger, the powers-that-be would be unlikely to change their direction without clear evidence.

And so Cole knew what he had to do, seeing it with perfect clarity.

He had to escape from prison, get out of Serbia, and make his way into Iran to find this man, Mohammed Younesi.

Find
him
, and find out just what the hell else the Iranian government had planned for the Western world.

Before it was too late.