Pavel was struggling to keep up with the younger, fitter Luca as they navigated themselves through the forest and headed towards the den.
For Luca, the pace was nothing unusual. He had been raised in the mountains in Sicily where the heat and the terrain had hardened him before he had joined the GIS – the Gruppo di Intervento Speciale, Italy’s elite counter-terrorist unit – and where he had become the special operator that he was today.
It was the third time in the last fifteen minutes that Luca had made them stop, crouch and wait.
“I think we are being followed,” he whispered. They were close up, ear to mouth to keep the sound of their voices down.
“What? Are you sure?”
Luca shook his head. “No, but I want to check it out. Wait here.”
Pavel had gripped the other man’s arm. “Where are you going? You can’t leave me!”
“I’m going to dog-leg around to the rear. Just to check our back. We can’t have anyone following us to the extraction point,” whispered Luca and he handed Pavel a small sub-compact pistol, an S&W MP 2.0 back-up gun from an ankle holster. “If you see anyone that isn’t me, you use it, okay? You just point it at their centre mass and pull the trigger until they drop. I’ll come running as fast as I can.”
Pavel stared down at the gun in horror. He’d never fired a gun before, let alone attempted to kill someone with one.
“If I’m not back in the next hour, then go. Here, take this, it’s a GPS locater. It has the coordinates of the den logged into it and after that, the final extraction point. Can you ride a motorcycle?” whispered Luca.
Pavel nodded. “I had a scooter when I was at home many years ago.”
“Good, it’s the same principle. At the den there is a BMW Scrambler. Use it to get to the extraction location. Dump the bike a few hundred feet from the field where the heli will land to meet you and hide in the bushes near the tree line. Everything you need is logged into the GPS,” said Luca and then he was gone, moving off into the darkness of the forest, leaving Pavel alone, huddled behind a tree, his only comfort being a semi-automatic pistol that he was terrified of.
The movement was slow-going, not only because of the limited visibility but also because of the noise signature from the forest floor. The crunch of leaves could be a death sentence.
Several times Luca stopped and crouched, the silenced pistol in the ready position, and listened intently. It was like moving in an inky blackness.
He heard a faint rustle of leaves from behind him and he knew it was too late. Instinctively, he swung around in a low crouch, his body moving like a tank turret as he aimed the pistol in the darkness. He thought he saw a shape and he fired, only realising that it was a trick of the darkness and that the assassin was nearer than he first thought.
The assassin fired and Luca felt the intense burning in his stomach. FUCK! I’ve been shot again!
Then it was the traditional tried and tested method of close quarter combat; both men, suppressed pistols in play, were now grappling with each other, each trying to dominate physically so that they could get a clear shot off.
Luca could feel the blood from the shot that had penetrated his stomach. His head was dizzy and his mind was reeling and, as if sensing that, the assassin took advantage and head-butted Luca directly in the face. As he fell back, Luca fired off two shots but knew that they had gone wide and high over the intended target. The assassin fired downwards, flinching from Luca’s shots, and another bullet took the SCALPEL man once more in the stomach. Luca howled and kicked out with his boots at the assassin’s legs, bringing him crashing to the ground. After that, it became a tangle of bodies, legs and strikes as the inevitability of ground fighting began.
The assassin had the advantage; he was stronger, held the dominant position on top of his opponent and was uninjured. The only disadvantage was that he had lost his pistol in the darkness when he had fallen. But he still had the use of his hands… and hands could kill just as well as a bullet.
Luca felt the weight of the man on top of him and then felt two strong hands grip his throat. He gasped for breath as the hands around his throat clenched tighter and tighter. In the haze of his mind, he tried to remember what he had been taught about how to escape such a situation, but his mind was growing foggy and he knew that this was a surety of imminent death.
It was the noise of combat and violence.
In the darkness, Pavel was only aware of the crashing of branches and the guttural sound of men trying to kill each other in hand-to-hand combat. There was the sound of suppressed gunfire and then a scream… another suppressed shot and then a pitiful moan and Pavel knew in that moment that there was a victor. The question was, which man had won?
Despite the inky blackness, Pavel’s eyes had acclimated to the environment and, while he could not see detail, he could see shapes through the curtain of trees and branches. It was two men, one tall and muscular and the other leaner and smaller. Luca was the smaller of the two.
The guns seemed to have been abandoned whether through choice or circumstance and the two figures were locked together in the manner of wrestlers, both trying to dominate. There was another suppressed shot confirming that at least one gun was still in play, a scream and then both men were dragged to the floor.
Luca had said for him to stay put.
But Luca sounded like he was in trouble. Should he stay or should he… try to help?
But what could he do? He was one man and he wasn’t trained for this, knew nothing about violence and fighting. As a spy, he might have been able to summon up the courage to lie and infiltrate, but as a fighter, an operative, a killer… that wasn’t him, he couldn’t do it.
And do you think any of those people… the Fisherman, SCALPEL, any of them… wanted to die for you for nothing? Stop being a coward – help the man!
Pavel closed his eyes and steeled himself. He had a gun and he had the element of surprise. It would have to be enough. He hoped…
As he crept nearer to the fight, keeping in a low crouch and trying his best to be stealthy, he could hear the gurgle and retching noise and he instantly knew what was happening. When his sister was a toddler, she had almost choked on a build-up of fluid in her throat. Their father had quickly lifted her up and cleared her airway, but the wretched sound of a human trying to desperately breathe had never left Pavel’s mind in all those years. It was the sound he was hearing now as the assassin was crouched over Luca, his hands around his throat and choking the life from him.
He could not allow that to happen. He could not allow a man who had protected him and saved him to be murdered in front of him, no matter how distasteful he found the thought of killing.
Pavel fired blindly. He did not aim and he did not align the weapon because really, in the darkness, there would have been no point. Instead, he instinctively pointed the gun at the head shape in front of him and kept pulling the trigger. He knew that he wasn’t firing because he was brave, but because he was scared. The figure dropped and flopped to the side and in the cool night air Pavel could smell the metallic tang of blood.
Pavel instantly dropped the pistol as if it had burned his hand. Truly, he just couldn’t bear the cold feeling of death that it emitted. He ran over to Luca and knelt over him. “Can you get up?”
“I… I can’t…” groaned Luca hoarsely, his hand protecting the bullet wounds in his stomach. Pavel’s protector, his bodyguard and friend, was in a bad way. The front of his jacket was saturated with blood and his throat had swollen up to twice its size from the attempted strangulation.
“But I can’t leave you here,” said Pavel. He had started to cry, tears overwhelming him now.
“I’m not going… to… make it…”
“I can carry you, I can…”
“No… no you can’t. I’ll die from my wounds… but the rucksack… where is the rucksack?” asked Luca weakly. He could feel himself slipping away now.
“It’s here,” said Pavel, unhooking it from his shoulder and opening it.
“Get me the two grenades. Don’t worry, it’s for the best. No Prism operative can be caught alive or ID’d in the field. I’m not gonna be the first. Give them to me,” said Luca.
Pavel handed over the M34 White Phosphorus grenades and placed them on Luca’s chest.
“I know… you had to kill a man and that sucks. But you have to… you have to go on… otherwise… everything that we have done has been for nothing,” said Luca, his voice now barely above a whisper so Pavel had to strain to hear him.
“But…”
“It’s about another twenty minutes that way to the den. The GPS will get you there. Don’t look back. Take the last motorcycle and ride for another thirty minutes or so… get to the extraction point,” said Luca, holding the grenade against his chest, fingers ready in the pins.
Pavel stood looking down at his friend, the tears coming freely now, and he knew that it was what must happen. The resolve in the SCALPEL man said it all. Here he was, lying bleeding out in the mud of a foreign forest and still willing to sacrifice himself so that someone like Pavel Zeman could carry on the fight that he no longer could.
“I can’t…” said Pavel feebly.
“Agh… there is no time for this. You have to get out… you have to make a difference, otherwise all of this has been for nothing. NOW, GO!” growled Luca.
Pavel lifted the GPS device in his hand and switched on the power. Moments later, the system kicked in and the route led Pavel deeper and deeper into the darkness of the forest. He walked, not looking back as he had been told, instead concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other and the green glow of the line on the GPS that would lead him to the den.
Moments later, in the distance behind him there was a bright flash of light, the sound of an explosion and the fizz of chemicals as the grenades destroyed what was left of Luca’s body.