The Hit List (35 page)

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'It's when situations like this come up,' Andreas continued, 'that you realise how dependent you were in the Regiment. On the MOD, the police, the Home Office, whoever. If you wanted something -- kit, money, back-up, firepower - you just had to ask and it was there.' He hooked his thumbs fatalistically into the belt-loops of his jeans. 'Here it's different. Here it's just us.'

Slater nodded. 'The RDB aren't going to want to attract the police's attention either, though, are they?'

'If there's unsilenced shooting, the police will be there within five minutes,' said Leon. 'Ten, max.'

'Look,' said Chris. 'Until Terry makes his report, we can't make any plans. Why don't you guys go and get some sleep? Whatever's going to happen is going to happen tonight, so you're going to need to be sharp. Paris has bad associations for us, we don't want to lose anyone else here.'

She turned to Leon. 'What arrangements did you make about weapons?'

'The best I could manage for definite was three ex military FAMAS rifles with silencers. They're quite reliable, in fact -- we had them in the Legion.'

'Ammunition?'

'Comes with. The guy's waiting for my call to arrange an exchange. The price is thirty thousand francs, cash.'

'Why don't you make the call now?' Chris suggested. 'Arrange the pick-up for tonight, so you don't have to bring them back here. Do you trust this guy?"

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'!'ve done business with him before,' said Leon. t's where I got the Clock and the Sig Sauer. And ^S rifles are never a problem -- all the French services have them.' nodded. 'OK. Get some sleep.'

pm, showered and changed, Slater rejoined the He had not slept well; fractured images of i^-Khayat's disembowelled body slipping into the darkness of the Seine had alternated with the that he himself was drowning. And Eve. was happening to her, locked up with Branca |�lic and her RDB footsoldiers? They would have tioned her, at the very least, about the Fanon at assassination. They would have wanted to find " MI6 knew about the Ondine deal, or whether Just wanted to recover the disc, tical questioning, as the Regiment had called it, refined science. Eve was trained to resist sgation and would hold out for as long as she but everyone broke sooner or later. Training i at Pontrilas or Imber, however harsh, came to Fingernails were not ripped out with pliers, les were not taped to the genitals, prisoners i not anally raped with cattle-prods. In the field, rer, it was a different story. In the field it went on and got worse and worse, until you fell -- or led - apart.

le disc was not delivered intact, that would ily be Eve's fate. Slater had no illusions about

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that. She would be tortured until she had given up all that she knew, and then killed and disposed of.

But the orders from Manderson were that the disc was not to be sacrificed for Eve. They would have to go in and pull her out: to assault what would probably turn out to be a near-impregnable position defended by a numerically superior, better-armed force. Tactically, it made no sense at all.

But then, Slater had mused as he drifted into sleep, what the fuck did?

In the room that had been the OP he found Terry, who had handed over watcher duties to Chris. Slater congratulated him on the success of his knackering surveillance marathon.

'Well, you know what they say,' said Terry, swigging on a can of Fanta from the minibar. 'When all else fails, bring in a fat lad from Essex!'

'I'll remember that,' smiled Slater, buoyed up by Terry's cheerful manner.

A large steak and French fries was waiting for him on a trolley, and he devoured it at the glass-topped dressing-table. Around him the others were making similar arrangements. Slater watched them covertly. Basically the unit divided into the brains, the eyes and the muscle. Eve and Leon were the brains, the planners; Chris and Terry were the eyes, and he and Andreas were the muscle. But it was more complex than that, because according to Eve the others were all pretty good with firearms, too -- excepting Terry, of course. Terry's job, like Chris's, was to bind the team

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Chris Ryan

jgether. The two of them seemed to have aim itless patience and steady good humour. Of cou , of these roles overlapped - at a pinch they could each other's jobs. He himself, Slater reckoned, \ - bad planner, and there wasn't much Andreas did aow about surveillance, and so on. , They were a good team, Slater concluded. He'd h doubts to begin with, but having seen them sration he wouldn't have changed any of them. A the team was to be put to the ultimate test - hostage-rescue.

coffee poured, cigarettes lit, and the load ley returned to the corridor, Terry belch lingfully into a paper tissue. 'All right lads, listi 'he position, as far as we can calculate, is that E1 sing held on the fifth floor of a warehouse in tl de Coude. We have no hard proof of that, but 1 this' -- he held up a scrap of paper -- 'just outsid fou can see it's a receipt for a cappuccino from tl hMocha at the Waterloo Eurostar terminus. TP ; is last Friday, the day we came over. Like I said I't prove anything, but if this wasn't Eve trying t s us a sign, then it's one hell of a coincidence.' le others nodded. 'It would have been dark whe brought her in,' said Andreas. 'She'd have bee

drop it without being spotted.' j{ow I've had a close look at the building througl 6* -- Terry held up a small pair of Zeiss binocular

I've done a few drawings.' Dm the pocket of his coat, which was lying on thi

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bed next to him, he took out a French schoolboy's notebook.

'This is of the front, which is in glazed brick, and this is of the back, which is the same. The roof is the mansard type. It's steeply pitched and covered in very old, very insecure-looking slates. The roofs to either side are the same. The only way up there that I could see is through the building itself and out through a skylight. There's a fire escape, but it's very old and narrow, and I doubt whether it would take the weight of an armed man. And even if it did you'd be spotted the moment you left the ground. They've got a pretty effective security rota going, with at least one guy patrolling the area at all times. As we already know, these guys aren't the usual brandy-swigging, shell-suit wearing Serbian paramilitary bullies, they're well trained RDB agents. They're going to notice if a mountaineering team armed with assault rifles starts making its way up the front of their building.

'A more sensible option, in my opinion, would be to pick the lock of one of the buildings next door, which are both five-storey warehouse blocks, and take armed possession of the top-floor. Once up there you could remove some brickwork and go in through the partition wall.'

'Too noisy without special equipment,' said Slater I immediately. 'And takes for ever. I've been involved in jobs like that - you need fibre-optic lenses and all sorts \ if it's going to work. Even with the right kit it would \ take all night to pick our way through. There isj

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ler way, though. And that's straight in through jnt door.' le others fell silent.

ic main trouble with an assault through a tion or roof is that it's a kill-em-all option. The ' way to get Eve out if we assault the place is to kill able all of them. Whatever happened there'd be jath, and it's a probability that a fair amount of blood would be ours. Plus there's a good chance ^wouldn't survive anyway.' /e've got to give it a go,' said Andreas, although could tell from the tone of his voice that he had ae misgivings. 'We can't just leave her there.' not suggesting we leave her there,' said Slater. I think we ought to do is snatch Branca, and ige an exchange of hostages. My suggestion is Mneone from the RDB rings Branca, asks for a meet, and we jump her.' : others stared at him.

aeone from the RDB?' said Leon, incredulous. r do we arrange that?'

; Ridley,' said Slater. 'Tell him to get on to the i desk and find a native Serbian speaker and to go the files for the names of a couple of senior i officers. At a given time, the Serbian guy rings �'s mobile from London - I got the number I'Pasquale rang her this morning - and says he's ordered to contact her. He drops a couple of |ed names, just to show he is who he says he is. �of the men with her, he says, is working

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undercover for the Americans, or the Albanians, or whoever. She must come alone and in secret to such and-such a place, where she will be told what to do.'

'And once she arrives we grab her, drag her back to where she's got Eve, and arrange an exchange,' said Leon. 'I like it!'

'It avoids a shoot-out.' Slater shrugged. 'A shootout that we might well lose, as things stand.'

Terry, who had been listening in silence, helped himself to one of Andreas's cigarettes. 'Why don't we go through it point by point?' he said.

360

FOURTEEN

7.30pm Slater went with Leon to pick up the his. Chris had spoken to Manderson several in the course of the afternoon, and the Cadre had approved the plan to kidnap Branca and ige her for Eve. P4, the head of Balkan

Jtions, had agreed to help Manderson out without ig on knowing the precise circumstances. This

| unconventional, but as Manderson had gently ed out, it was at P4's request that the Cadre had ic involved in the first place. It had been the i desk, not to put too fine a point on it, who had Fanon-Khayat dead.

ie time agreed for the fake call from Belgrade was it French time - any earlier and there would people on the streets, any later and there was

fern that Branca's mobile might be switched off.

fccision had been made in London that a twenty -year-old Serbian-speaking MI6 agent was to the call. Until recently Pavel Djukic had been a

.'World Service employee, and had only joined

I Balkan desk six weeks earlier. His time behind a i-studio microphone had given him a vocal

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authority beyond his years, however, and he was confident of his ability to bamboozle Branca Nikolic. The service had amassed a fair volume of information on the Serbian secret service, and Djukic was swotting up the files on individual RDB officers in preparation for a heavy bout of name-dropping.

Once again, Leon and Slater swiftly threw off their Serbian tails. The weapons contact was an Algerian named Schafa, who fronted a business in used small arms with a bicycle repair shop in Belleville in the twentieth arrondissement. Leon and Schafa had done hard time together at Clairvaux prison, and since joining the Cadre Leon had brought a fair amount of business the Algerian's way.

On their arrival in Belleville, Schafa insisted that they join him in a glass of mint tea. The tiny grease stained office attached to his workshop smelt pleasantly of cycle oil and tyre-rubber, and Slater resolved to buy a bicycle when - and if- he got back to London. He had never owned one as a child; now was the time to put that right.

As he looked round, fingering chains, wingnuts, spokes and drop-handlebars, Schafa and Leon chattered away in rapid-fire French. As most of the language that they used was underworld slang, Slater could barely understand a word of it but he gathered from their expressions that Schafa had managed to pull something special out of the hat for his old Clairvaux cellmate.

Eventually the Algerian led them through the

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lop and up a grimed and narrow flight of stairs stockroom. At the end, beyond a plastic-strip i, was the locked entrance to the next-door unit. Leon murmured to Slater, was also owned by i, but under the front of a mail-order company : DIY tools.

; door swung open to reveal ceiling-to-floor

of cheaply finished tyre-jacks, pipe-cutters,

^driver and spanner sets and adjustable monkey

ches. The casing indicated that these goods

ated in a variety of countries, including China,

a, Romania, Israel and Byelorussia, am beneath a bench Schafa slid a metal case with characters sprayed on to it. Opened, a tray ig a display set of variously sized Maglite-style was revealed. Beneath this, however, nestling ense black bed of foam-rubber, was a 9mm Uzi chine gun, and three twenty-five-round ics. Reaching down, Schafa pulled the weapon an an affectionate hand over its square, riveted,

d outline, and handed it to Leon. e!' said Leon. thought you said he had FAMAS rifles,' aured Slater.

iey've gone,' said Leon. 'Probably Corsican ; - apparently they're quite good customers.' the fatter-than-normal barrel Slater could tell ic Uzi was one of the suppressed models built for and urban use. You could cheerfully blast off t rounds outside a police station with one of these

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and no one would hear a thing. Given a close-quarters firefight Slater would have preferred the MP5s that the RDB carried, but the Israeli-designed Uzis were an acceptable alternative.

'I've got three of these altogether,' said Schafa reverently. 'Licence-built by FN in Belgium. They came up from Marseilles this afternoon.'

Leon nodded and translated for Slater.

'These would be great,' Slater agreed. 'Apart from anything else they're small, which will help when we're carrying them in the streets. Has he got the subsonic ammunition to go with them?'

Schafa nodded. 'I have nine-mil subsonic. I also have this - la piece de resistance.' Ducking down, he reached another flat steel case from below the bench, opened it, and removed a layer of plug-spanner sets. Beneath, embedded as the Uzi had been, was a black matt-finished rifle, luminated sniper-scope, compensator, magazine and cleaning kit.

'A Dragunov sniper rifle,' said Leon thoughtfully. 'Not bad. Not bad at all.'

'A Romak-3,' said Schafa. 'Takes ten rounds of 7.62.'

'And if you need all of those,' added Slater, 'then you're well and truly fucked. This is the Romanian made model, isn't it?'

Schafa nodded.

Slater drew Leon aside. 'This could be useful. Who's the best shot out of the four of us?'

'Hard to say. What about you?'

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fell, I led an SAS sniper team a couple of years but I'm probably the rustiest in terms of recent 2-hours. How are Chris and Terry?' ; good as any of us.'