How did I know it was a hit?
As I eased the Dacia out of the car park, trying to get used to the new distribution of weight, I knew I would be asking myself that question for a long time to come.
‘How is she?’ Freddie asked, tapping the dash with the barrel of the shotgun.
Skittish? I thought. Was that the right word? Though that suggested a prancing colt; something delicate and dainty. The Dacia was only a few steps up from a tractor. I settled on: ‘A very pregnant sow on four wheels.’
We’d been in FWD vehicles before, driving towards men who wanted to harm us. Iraq. Afghanistan. Normally, though, we had a bunch of hard-nosed squaddies with us, not a civilian hiding behind bags of cement. Although, to be fair, we hadn’t given him much choice.
We began our descent, with my foot hovering over the brake. The rear end felt twitchy due to the extra baggage. I reckoned the Dacia would prefer to come down arse-first. I had placed the automatic pistol in the centre console. It was a Beretta, with the older fifteen-round magazine. Worn, but OK from what I could tell from a quick once-over. In an ideal world I’d strip down and reassemble an unfamiliar weapon half-a-dozen times, putting a round through it at each rebuild. Just as Pavol, my Slovakian weapons tutor, had taught me. But this was a far from ideal world: I wouldn’t know if I had been sold a pup until I pulled the trigger. And that might be too late.
So, how had I known it was a hit? Not some sixth sense; not the hairs on the back of my neck or a gut feeling. I think it was the choreography. That’s what PPOs like me do. We visualise – or some sketch out on paper, napkins, fag packets, whatever is at hand – the possible lines of attack and escape; the threats and responses. You need to know how to extract the client – the Principal, in PPO speak – safely if shit goes down. So you sit and try to calculate what might be coming and from which direction. Those instincts tick over, even while you are not in paid employment, idling at a White/Yellow status. It is what makes PPOs such crap dining companions. They never just sit, relax and look at the menu. There is always at least one meerkat moment when they look around, calculating the odds.
So, while I was sitting at the café, I had already assessed we were vulnerable to a drive-by. I also knew the trick of identifying a target by phoning the venue. These days it was usually the intended victim’s mobile that rang, but maybe those lads on the bike didn’t have Adam’s number.
‘Here?’ Freddie asked, as I slowed for a bend. To my left there was a cliff edge with a fifty-metre drop to some scrubby trees and not much in the way of crash barriers, and to my right, a rock face. It was constricted. But it would be for any opposition as well.
If they tried to block us with a car, someone might go over the edge. And that someone might be them.
‘Not yet,’ I said. I became aware that my heart was pounding in my chest. I wasn’t breathing properly. Too shallow and the heart has to up its game to try to replace lost oxygen. I gulped in some air and then regulated my breathing to deep and slow. ‘Soon enough though, don’t worry about that.’
‘Who the hell are you two again?’ Adam queried from the rear.
‘You already asked that,’ I reminded him. ‘And we told you.’
‘Well, it wasn’t what you might call full disclosure, was it?’
Freddie gave him a fuller answer. She gave a quick outline of two ex-military medics who had ended up on the Circuit, the international brotherhood – and, increasingly, sisterhood – of those in the security industry.
‘You haven’t really explained who this Leka bloke is you are so concerned with.’
I could, of course, have explained about my ‘boyfriend’ Tom, who, as a British soldier, was part of the Kosovo Force (KFOR), four international brigades of peacekeeping troops. It also included my late husband Paul, who, alongside Tom, had been involved in a rather one-sided fight with some Albanian would-be rapists. I remembered the words, the anguish in them, as Tom described the scene, the memory still raw as they stood and watched a group of men surround a young goatherd, just thirteen or fourteen years old.
One of the men – an older one – started to jeer at us. They made all sorts of obscene gestures.
Goading us.
They knew we couldn’t touch them.
Some of the younger ones had begun to paw and prod at the girl. She was lashing out at them, which only made them laugh more. It was like a vile game of ’It’.
Then another guy – I’d say about thirty, the one with the AK –walked ten, fifteen metres down the hill, so he was closer to us. He unbuttoned his pants and flipped out one of the biggest cocks I’ve ever seen. I mean, there’s always one in a group like that, isn’t there? Always one hung like a donkey who takes every opportunity to whip it out. His looked like he should have a licence to take it for a walk.
The others cheered. He waved it about at us, pointed at it, then at the girl. Just in case we were particularly slow.
So he started working at it while we watched, running his hand up and down the shaft, pulling back the foreskin, until he had this great stonker on. Two of the men had the girl by her wrists at this point, so she couldn’t go anywhere. The rest were clapping, this sort of rhythmic, almost flamenco-like dance clapping. As if it were some kind of cabaret . . .
And then one of the Brits opened fire, hitting the guy with the hard-on. At which point they realised that, by interfering, they had broken the KFOR non-intervention mandate.
So they killed them all.
It was the logic of madness, but, as he said, the whole world seemed turned on its head in Kosovo at that time.
Paul, my future husband, had tried to stop the slaughter. And Tom had let one of the potential rapists – a young kid – live, pretending to shoot him in the head, but deliberately missing. Now Leka, that boy, was an all-grown-up warlord intent on getting revenge on the British squad.
They may have let him live, but the Brits had killed the others; his family and friends. Maybe Leka reasoned he had been spared to avenge them.
It was certainly possible he had already managed to kill Paul, who was shot coming off a shift for a British Nuclear Police/MI5 operation.
And Leka knew he could get to Tom through me. I couldn’t just let that go.
I couldn’t go on thinking Tom might get hurt or I might be followed and kidnapped to use as bait for him, as they had once tried in Zurich.
But I didn’t tell that story to Adam. I also didn’t tell him the bigger reason I had for wanting to resolve the situation with Leka, and fast.
The truth was, I was needed over the other side of the world, where my daughter Jess was with her father. Her father who had taken her without my permission; had snatched her from under my nose. They were last seen in Bali. But I knew Jess was no longer there.
When the photographs that my old mentor, the Colonel, had extracted from the internet had showed she was in Bali, I contacted the UK police, who asked the Balinese cops to investigate. However, with there being no current extradition treaty between Indonesia and the UK, all they could do was check ‘on a friendly basis’.
A frustratingly vague report had come back: Our enquiries show that, while the suspect had been in the country, sources indicate he has now left the island of Bali with the girl.
I had always known that the chances of Jess still being there were slim – Matt, my ex, knew enough to keep moving, especially if he ever caught wind of the fact I was coming for them – but Bali was where I could pick up the trail. And I would.
If you live that long.
Not helpful.
I made an effort to stop thinking about Matt and Jess, and Laura, the treacherous au pair who had helped him take my daughter. I really didn’t want that anger out there yet, clouding my vision, not given our current situation.
What had Adam asked?
Oh, yes. About Leka. I just said: ‘It’s complicated. I needed to get something to use against him.’
‘For what?’
I said nothing.
‘And have you?’
‘Yes.’ I didn’t expand. My leverage came from Saban, the barman, who had been at school with Leka. Though I suspected his association went beyond that. Saban was coy about how he knew so much about Leka’s operations in Europe, but it was clear he hated him. My guess was this: Saban had been part of Leka’s organisation in France. They had fallen out. Saban had come back home to open his café, but he still despised Leka enough to dish the dirt on him when asked, even by a couple of strangers in town. I suspected Saban had some skeletons of his own in some worm-riddled cupboard, but that wasn’t my concern. Neutralising Leka was.
‘That’s good,’ Adam said.
I grunted. Saban had given me decent stuff all right, but leverage was only worthwhile if you lived to use it.
I was looking down at the rusty skeleton of a bus nestled among the spindly spruce on the slope below us – always a reassuring sight when driving mountain passes – when a real, live one came barrelling around the bend in the middle of the road. It honked a horn so loud it might have been signalling Armageddon was on the way, and it almost was. I swerved, but the Dacia decided I hadn’t swerved enough. I lost grip and we clipped the cliff face to my right. The side panel gave a squeal of protest as I scored a gouge in the rock, and then, with a final punch of air, the bus was past us and carried on up the mountain road.
‘We’re not going to get that deposit back at this rate,’ said Freddie, as I managed to pull us away from the cliff edge. I felt the snag in my shoulder from a damaged muscle or tendon, but ignored it.
A six-hundred-Euro deposit was the least of my worries.
‘Look, I’m sorry I’ve got you into this. You still think someone told them I was here?’ Adam asked.
I shook my head. ‘I don’t know. The stringer you were waiting for is still the best bet.’
Freddie threw me a glance that suggested she disagreed. She thought the answer was closer to Adam’s home. Someone wanted him out of the way.
The Sayonara Syndrome.
Unlike Freddie, I was never certain that was true of Captain Dawson. The marriage to the widow of the man he sent out to be blown up by an IED didn’t prove the captain was putting the lieutenant in harm’s way. But then, human nature – and lust – was pretty unpredictable at the best of times. I just didn’t buy it in this case.
Adam’s phone pinged.
I hoped he had the Seventh Cavalry on speed dial but somehow doubted it.
‘Voicemail. Hold on.’
I was still negotiating a long series of switchbacks that had taken us around the sides of the mountain and down towards the valley below. I could see part of the road we had already traversed above us, the bus that had nearly sideswiped the Dacia climbing at stillindecent speed and, just passing it on the way down, a black four-door saloon.
‘They might not be waiting for us down below,’ I said.
Adam sounded distracted. ‘Great. Hold on, I’ll just listen to this.’
Freddie knew I wasn’t talking to Adam. She followed the direction of my gaze, and probably caught a flash of dark paint before it disappeared from our view. She shifted in her seat, as if ungluing herself from it. ‘You could be right.’
I looked in the mirror. Adam was sitting up, holding his phone to his ear, his face furrowed in concentration as he tried to hear the message. ‘Adam, get down,’ I said.
‘It’s Kath.’
Phone addiction. It’ll kill you. I knew it still hadn’t got through to him just what danger he was in. Correction: we were in.
Status: glowing red-hot.
‘Adam, for fuck’s sake. It’ll wait. Get your fuckin’ head down.’
Freddie swivelled. ‘This is what we do, remember? Do as she says.’
He gave a petulant huff and slid down behind the screen of cement. I now had a half-decent view out of the rear window, enough to see that the saloon, as it rounded the bend immediately behind us, was one of the bigger-model Peugeots. I could hear the smooth, low growl of its engine over the bag-of-nails rattle of ours. I pressed the accelerator, knowing I couldn’t outrun him. Or her. But this was Albania; him was a good guess. I couldn’t keep my eyes on the mirror long enough to ID who was in the car, not now that the Dacia was acting like a toboggan on sheet ice, slithering into the bends and rolling so much it felt like we’d be up on two wheels at any moment.
I was right on the edge, in more ways than one.
‘Two of them,’ said Freddie, who had twisted to take a look. ‘Two blokes.’
The Peugeot’s horn blared – not as loud as the bus’s, but in three impatient bursts. I risked another few millimetres on the pedal, pulling away by a couple of extra yards. My hands were gripping the wheel hard now. I’d have to do some serious steering if I lost it on any of the shallow curves I could see ahead.
‘Impatient driver or persons of interest?’ I asked.
The shattering of the rear window into ice crystals answered my question.
I heard Adam shout in alarm as he was showered with fragments of glass. I reckoned it was just shock, but asked, ‘You OK?’
‘They’re shooting at us.’
I couldn’t quite figure out whether that was a question or not. But the quiver in his voice told me that something about our predicament had finally got through his thick skull.
‘Ya reckon?’ Freddie offered as she clambered into the back, over the cement sacks and into the well we had created in the rear. I heard a thump, like the sound of a glove on a punch bag. A gritty dust filled the cabin of the car as the bags puffed out their contents through the bullet holes.
‘Not AKs, then,’ said Freddie, with something akin to relief. Me, I think any old bullet can kill you if the shooter gets lucky, but she meant they weren’t penetrating our defensive shield.
I checked my wing mirror and the car weaved into view. The Peugeot’s passenger was leaning out of his side window holding something small, which we both knew wouldn’t have the penetrating power of an AK, but, if it had an automatic selection, could still spray us with bullets. On our side was the fact that I was a slippery target – not all of which was deliberate – and that aiming one of those Skorpions or Uzis, even while stationary, is no easy option. He could waste a whole magazine before he got a bead on us.
‘Brake.’
I didn’t need to be asked twice. I stomped. The Dacia fishtailed as we took the bend and slowed dramatically. The Peugeot didn’t have much time to react and was almost at our bumper when Freddie shouted: ‘Ears.’
I got a finger in my right ear before she discharged the shotgun. In my mirror, I watched the windscreen of the Peugeot turn opaque and the car dance across the road. Its tyres bounced over the stones that marked the road edge and, for a second, I hoped it would flip, but already the driver had punched a jagged hole in the screen and he recovered nicely.
Bastard.
‘Incoming!’ Freddie yelled, and then I felt as much as heard rounds sparking off the rear door. There was a clunk as the metal was pierced. More dust rose and I heard Adam coughing.
I watched as the sole of a boot stomped at the Peugeot’s damaged windscreen repeatedly until it peeled away and spun backwards. It twisted through the air and into the valley, glinting as it cartwheeled down to the trees.
Christ, now they could fire straight through the space where the windscreen had been, which would make for far more accurate fire than leaning out of the door. Freddie clearly thought the same thing, as she said: ‘Oops.’
I began to yank the wheel back and forth, setting up an oscillation that was at the very brink of the car’s stability.
‘Ears!’ Freddie fired three quick rounds from the Beretta before it jammed. ‘Fuck.’
I couldn’t have put it better myself.
The road was opening out as we reached the last section of the hairpin. Ahead of us, it entered a long straight section where the cliff, now more of a low bluff, and the road edge, were hundreds of metres apart. It’s not the place I would have chosen for a roadblock – too wide – but they had made a good fist of it. They had positioned two big white vans facing each other about three metres apart and then a number of what were probably concrete- or water-filled barrels to take care of any gaps in the blockade that I might try to drive through. There was no way I could force my way past without totalling our vehicle.
‘Hold on!’ I yanked the Dacia to the right and spun it, and this time it really did lift onto two wheels. As it thumped back down, I put it in reverse and drove us back towards what was left of the diminished cliff face where I had spotted a fissure or crevice – an indentation, anyway. As I approached, I realised it was larger than I had first thought and I pulled on the wheel so that the car, now parked sideways, blocked the entrance. It was the closest I could get to circling the wagons.
‘Out! Out!’
I went through the passenger door as Freddie and Adam came out of the back over the cement sacks. Freddie tossed me the pistol.
I pulled the slide back. The chamber was empty. But it had been a full mag and she had only fired three shots.
I could hear Pavol’s voice in my head: Misfeed! You know what to do. I hoped I remembered correctly. I slammed the palm of my left hand into the base of the butt, then racked the slide back to its full extent in the smoothest movement I could manage with shaking hands.
I felt the round chamber: sticky bullets, bad spring – who knew? I took a breath and shook my head. My ears were whistling from the gunshots.
I gave Freddie and Adam a quick once-over. Adam looked like he had aged three decades, but that might have been because he was covered in grey cement dust. Freddie was similarly coated, but she just looked pissed off that someone had spoiled her top.
Her eyes told a different story, though. She knew we were not in a good place.
This might be where it ends.
I stifled that voice and peeked over the bonnet. The Peugeot had stopped some way short of the barricade. The two men had exited from it and were walking towards another group of four – the ones who had set up the roadblock.
The Peugeot guys were unharmed by the looks of it.
Damn.
The passenger had the Skorpion pistol held in his right hand; the other had a hefty-looking handgun. The roadblock men were carrying an assortment of shotguns and rifles, one of which looked like an Armalite. Not an AK, perhaps, but trouble all the same.
The two parties met up, shook hands and slapped backs, as if they were long-lost friends meeting for a drink. We barely merited a glance as they jabbered and gesticulated. But then they knew we weren’t going anywhere. The indent in the cliff was a dead end. And if we tried to climb . . . well, that would count as sport to these guys.
Now, finally, they all turned towards us. They carried on talking and it was clear they were discussing what to do about us. I aimed down the barrel of the pistol, knowing they were too far away for me to able to count on even one of the three bullets finding a target.
Fifty metres was the claimed effective range, but that was in the hands of someone at the top of their game. Truth be told, I was rusty with a handgun at anything other than close range.
‘I can’t do anything with this thing from here,’ said Freddie, echoing my thoughts as she popped her head up next to mine. She meant the shotgun. ‘I was hoping it was loaded for bear, but I think I got bunnies. That windscreen didn’t cave the way I’d hoped.’
I became aware of our ad hoc Principal breathing down my neck. ‘What’s happening?’
‘Adam,’ I instructed. ‘Sit behind that tyre with your back to it, crouched down, arms over your head.’
‘I can’t do that,’ he protested. ‘Not with you up here.’
‘Don’t give me that wounded male pride bullshit again. Get over there.’
I yelled the last part as the first of the bullets snapped over my head and hit the cliff. Rock fragments rained down and I crouched behind the front wheel, with the engine block between me and the fusillade. Another batch, from the Armalite by the sound of it, sprayed the bodywork, sparking across the metal and shattering glass. The Dacia rocked and twitched under the impact.
Freddie was right. We wouldn’t be getting our six hundred Euros back.
‘You OK?’ I asked Freddie.
She inclined her head to one side and raised her eyebrows. I translated it as: Yeah, I’m stuck in a dead end behind a piece of shit car about to be murdered by Albanians with big guns. What’s not to like?
I felt a wobble, a surge of panic, and I closed my eyes for a second. I pushed the tide away. ‘I’m glad you’re here,’ I said. ‘Even if you aren’t so keen.’
‘All things considered—’
She never finished the sentence. The wall behind us was disappearing under a layer of dust as stray rounds pulverised the stone. I felt something sharp and hot sting my cheek. I didn’t have to poke my head up to know what was happening. They were walking towards us, line abreast, firing just enough to keep us cowed.
As the unfortunate Dacia disintegrated into iron filings along one side, I reckoned the situation couldn’t be much worse.
That’s when the AKs opened up.