Rogue Strike (A Troy Stark Thriller—Book #6), page 20
Troy turned and fired.
CLACK! CLACK! CLACK! CLACK!
The bullets whined and ricocheted off the walls.
Whoever was down there ducked back behind the door.
Dubois reached the door to the roof. She hesitated to open it.
"Go! Dubois! Go!"
“What if there’s…”
Troy shook his head. His eyes were on that door below them.
“We have no choice.”
Someone down there pulled the door open. A man fired a machine gun into the stairwell. The bullets ripped up the bottom stairs, cement chips flying everywhere.
DUH-DUH-DUH-DUH-DUH-DUH.
The sound was loud. LOUD. No suppressors for these guys.
Dubois pushed her way through the door. Troy cringed, waiting for the crack of gunfire on the roof. None came.
He yanked a grenade from the right front pocket of his vest. He pulled the pin and let the compressor go. He dropped the grenade down the stairs. It bounced downward like a hard rubber ball.
“So long, suckers.”
Troy turned and burst through the door.
Then he was out on the roof and running across it. Dubois was up ahead, half-running, half-stumbling. An icy wind whipped off the river.
There was the heavy THUMP of chopper blades against the wind. Troy looked up, and there was the helicopter, dropping in like a rock.
BA-BOOOOM.
The roof trembled. Troy fell down. The ice was hard and bit his skin.
Behind him, the cement doorway to the stairwell blew apart, breaking into flaming pieces. The door itself flew into the air, flapping like a disembodied wing.
Dust and smoke rose from where the doorway had just been.
The chopper was here, hovering a few feet above the roof. Dubois was trying to climb into it, without much success.
Troy pushed himself to his feet, slung the MAC onto his back, and ran. When he reached the helicopter, the door was open. He scooped Dubois up, clambered onto the runners, and placed her into the seat.
It was a tiny chopper. It was going to be tight in there.
He was still standing on the rails as Alex took off. He shoved the MAC into the narrow gear space in back, then wedged himself in with Dubois. Gradually, he maneuvered her into his lap. There was no way he could get the safety belts on.
Dubois seemed to melt into him.
“Rest now,” he whispered.
He looked at Dubois's beaten face. Her eyes were closed. Then she was unconscious, her energy drained as if someone had pulled a plug at the bottom, and it all flowed out.
They were a hundred feet in the air and climbing fast. Troy looked back. They were over the river, the sprawl of Belgrade all around them.
Behind and below them, the building started to burn. Troy looked at Alex.
Alex worked the controls. He watched the sky ahead of them, but appeared to see Troy in his peripheral vision. He shrugged.
“Thanks for boarding so quickly,” Alex said.
His sarcasm was too much sometimes.
Troy stared out at the sky, and the city. He felt numb. He didn't want to think, least of all about the state Dubois was in. He didn't want to think about finding her in a cage, or about the men he had just killed. He didn't want to think about his rage or the helpless feeling of watching Dubois get taken away this morning.
He didn’t want to think about anything at all.
“People often take a long time,” Alex said.
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
2:35 pm Central European Time
Aboard the freighter White Swan
Derdap National Park
Golubac, Serbia
“We have trouble.”
Andrezj Becic stood on the deck outside the pilot house of the rusty freighter. He took a deep drag of his cigarette. All around him, the steep hillsides of the national park loomed.
He stood at the rail in heavy coveralls, a thick wool coat, and steel-toed boots. It was cold out here, but Becic didn’t really feel the cold anymore. He didn’t really feel heat, either. Weather made little impact on him.
The White Swan was passing through a deep and tight ravine, which Becic would ordinarily think of as beautiful. A few kilometers ahead, the river would make a sharp bend to the left, and the ship, surrounded on three sides by land, would have to slow to a crawl to navigate the turn. Unfortunately, Becic didn’t think they were going to make it that far.
He had come this way many times. This was his ship, and he was about to lose it.
People often called him Kapeten, or the Captain. He went to sea as a teenager, and now he was 55 years old. He had traveled the world on the giant container ships. For a time, he had worked on vessels running weapons from Russia to sub-Saharan Africa. At another point, he had run heroin (and people) from Southeast Asia to Australia.
He supposed he had seen nearly everything. Vast, impossible slums in India, and Africa. Bazaars in teeming Third World ports with live exotic animals for sale, and also children. Cannibal tribes eating human flesh, and cheerfully offering to share. Knife fights. Gunfights. Missile attacks. Ghost ships full of dead migrants, floating rudderless in the Mediterranean, and the Caribbean, and the South China Sea.
He had grown to manhood under communism and watched it suddenly collapse, along with an entire way of life. He had seen his own beloved city, Belgrade, bombed into submission by the capitalist Western powers.
Becic took a deep breath. This was going to happen quickly.
A few moments ago, the gunmetal sky had been empty. A moment later, it seemed full of dark specks coming from the east, and growing larger all the time. Now, the specks had resolved into large white helicopters, the kind that carried military troops. Interspersed with the larger choppers were smaller ones, the so-called Flying Eggs - they were fast, light and maneuverable attack helicopters armed with rockets and machine guns.
There were at least a dozen helicopters up there, and Becic had no doubt where they were heading. Viktor Laskov had been on the docks this morning, which was always an ill omen. The man brought bad luck as though it was stuck to his skin.
He was always up to something, people around him often paid the price for his misadventures, and he walked away both unscathed and his pockets weighted down with money. Becic had experienced enough of life to believe completely in the supernatural. It was entirely possible that Laskov was a demon.
The White Swan was sailing toward a quarantine zone where tens of thousands of people likely had died. The boat was loaded with many illegal items. Viktor Laskov had turned up. Intruders were in the warehouse. Later in the day, a shootout had occurred, killing some of Bogovic's men. And now military helicopters were in the sky, thick like flies on a rotted corpse.
Where else could they be headed?
Becic pitched his cigarette over the side, turned and went back inside the pilot house. It was all windows, giving a lovely 360-degree view of the surroundings. The ship was old, at least half a century, but the pilot house had been overhauled.
It was nicely appointed with new leather command chairs, radar, sonar, depth finder, satellite communications, digital controls, manual overrides, coffee, microwave, a head, even a small backroom with a cot where Becic could take a nap without going back to his cabin. He was proud of the pilot house.
There were three men inside of it. Becic made it four. As he came in, the men were already in motion, opening the cabinet where the weapons were stored. There were four guns in there, two Uzis and two AK-47s. They were meant to discourage Black Sea pirates, not hold off military invasions.
“Kap…” one of the men said. He was a young guy, right out of school, broad, with a beefy face and blonde hair. People called him Mladic. It worked on two levels, both because he was young, and he bore more than a passing resemblance to Ratko Mladic, the convicted war criminal, or national hero, or whatever you liked.
Becic waved a hand. “Put those away. It’s ridiculous.”
Mladic pointed out the windows.
“Kap, look!”
Directly in front of them, a fat helicopter came down and hovered. Ropes depended from either side, and men in military fatigues went out, sliding down the ropes to the lower deck of the White Swan. Becic counted six men on each side. There were already a dozen heavily armed invaders on board.
Besides the four men in this room, there were seven more crewmen on the boat, one of whom was the cook.
They had already lost the war.
As the helicopter turned, Becic noted that it wasn’t white, as his eyes had seen it before. It was more of a light brown or sand color, with a sense of swirling camouflage to it. One word was stenciled across it in giant dark block letters.
NATO.
It hurt him. It hurt him to his core. And it made him angry. This was his ship. And these were the barbarians from the West.
As he watched, another helicopter came in. Another dozen men piled out and dropped to the ship’s deck.
“Kapeten!”
Becic turned and looked.
Mladic gestured at the closed circuit security screens.
On one screen, a group of men moved through the holds, rifles out and ready to fire. They were dressed for cold weather, faces covered except for the eyes. Their uniforms seemed bulky, probably from light bullet-proof armor they wore underneath.
Clarion alarms were screeching throughout the ship.
“Make an announcement to all of our men,” Becic said. “Surrender immediately and unconditionally. Let them see everything. Let them have everything.”
“Surrender?” Mladic said. “Kap?”
Becic nodded. It was a funny thing. In his long career, he had been detained many times, by coast guards, by military patrols, by police of various kinds. He had spent more than a few nights in lockups and jails, a couple of them real rat holes. But he had never been convicted of a crime. He had never even been on trial.
Something told him he wasn’t going to start now.
“Surrender, yes. Immediately.”
Already one of the men was on the ship intercom, making the announcement.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, there came a deafening shriek from the sky. It was visceral, piercing Becic’s entire body. He cringed from it, involuntarily, and ducked into a crouch. A ballistic missile perhaps, something was incoming. He froze, unable to move.
Outside the windows, three fighter jets in a triangle formation came up the valley behind the ship, flying very low. They zoomed by, causing Becic’s body to tremble, so loud they were almost beyond the range of hearing.
The helicopters jostled in the turbulence caused by their wakes.
Becic glanced at the bank of security videos again. The videos reached the pilot house a few seconds behind real time. On the video, the tough NATO troops did exactly what Becic had just done. They cowered in primitive animal terror. A few seconds later, they remembered themselves and recovered. Becic laughed. In the end, it was all a charade.
“Those are ours,” Mladic said. “Those are our jets!”
Becic shook his head, but he was still smiling. The poor boy was too eager for World War III. If he wasn’t careful, he was going to find his own version of it one day.
“They’re already gone,” Becic said. “They can’t help us. The surrender stands. Whatever these soldiers are looking for, they won’t find it here.”
He clapped the kid on the back. “No one is getting killed on my watch today.”
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
3:45 pm Central European Time
Headquarters of El Grupo Especial
Outskirts of Madrid
Spain
“Miquel?” Hans Jute said.
Miquel Castro-Ruiz sat in his office at headquarters, the telephone to his ear. It had been very a long day already, and it showed no evidence of stopping. It was just going to get longer and longer. His reputation, once again, was in tatters.
Hans Jute had called him to gloat. Miquel had taken the call just to get it over with. Now was a good time to do so because he was numb - with frustration, with exhaustion, with anger, and with an overwhelming sense of relief that Dubois was still alive. There wasn’t much that Hans could say that might bother Miquel right now, or even reach him.
Miquel glanced out the window. A crust of snow covered the grounds of the facility. The trees were bare. He could see a strip of the highway from here. If he wanted to, he could look all around the grounds, and see the half-built sheds and buildings, the empty helipad, and all the other evidence of his unrealized ambitions. He didn’t want to do that.
Yes, El Grupo Especial had done some remarkable things in its brief existence. They had saved a lot of lives, which was the reason Miquel had started it. They had also brought a lot of trouble down upon their own heads. The group had nearly been disbanded, numerous agents and analysts had been reassigned, and Miquel’s grander dreams had gone unfunded and unfinished.
“Yes. Hello, Hans.”
“Miquel, I’m not your direct supervisor.”
“I suppose I’m thankful for that,” Miquel said.
Hans ignored the comment.
“But I do represent Interpol at the international level. Part of my job is to explain and justify our actions to those who are skeptical of us. You’re aware that the freighter you urged us to board and impound was carrying nothing of interest, correct?”
Miquel shrugged. “I’m aware that it was carrying more than a hundred cases of stolen liquor lost in a truck hijacking, untaxed cigarettes, Cuban cigars that in all likelihood are counterfeit, hundreds of copies of bootlegged American films on DVD, as well as thousands of bottles of vitamin capsules that are probably corn starch, and an entire hold full of Chinese-made electronics masquerading as high-quality Western brands. The ship was loaded with contraband.”
Miquel knew how pathetic this all sounded. The primary load on the ship was consumer devices. It was practically a victimless crime. People in Eastern Europe wanted these things. Owning a fake Samsung or Apple product, even for a short while, made them all the more likely to aspire for the real thing one day. The companies whose trademarks and patents were infringed weren’t even losers in the deal.
“Contraband yes,” Hans said. “Evidence of criminal activity, for sure. But there was no deadly, weaponized disease on board.”
“I understand,” Miquel said.
“You understand, do you? And you understand that on your word, and your word alone, NATO forces essentially invaded Serbia? Do you understand why the men on board that ship immediately surrendered it without resistance?”
“Yes.”
It was as if Hans hadn’t heard him. He had probably practiced this speech for half an hour before picking up the telephone.
“I’ll tell you why. Because the so-called contraband they were carrying was so inoffensive that they will barely be punished for it. Unless someone on that boat has other warrants for his arrest, no one involved will spend more than a year in prison, if even that. They’re all claiming ignorance, and most of them are Serbs, sailing in Serbian waters. I’d say most of them will be home by tomorrow morning.”
Miquel was silent. He might as well let Hans finish his soliloquy.
“NATO forces penetrated Serbia and seized a Serbian freighter, Miquel. At the request and urging of Interpol, and not really Interpol, but a secretive black operations sub-agency within Interpol. This has barely reached the public yet, and already the street protests have begun in Belgrade. And in Moscow, for that matter. And in the Serbian Republic in Bosnia, which is already an unstable place, and likely on the verge of breaking away from Bosnia. Serbs don’t like NATO, Miquel, and with good reason. I reminded you of that this morning.”
“I remember,” Miquel said.
“The Serbs scrambled fighter jets, which buzzed the NATO helicopters. In other words, a shooting war between Serbia and NATO nearly broke out.”
The thing was a bit of a public relations disaster. He couldn’t agree more. At least no one was hurt during the boarding. Miquel felt flat, more than numb. He didn’t really care what Hans said or did at this point. It was a formality even listening to him.
“I doubt a real shooting war nearly broke out,” Miquel said, somewhat absently.
That was true, as far as it went. If the Serbs had learned anything from tangling with NATO in the past, it was that resistance was futile. Scrambling jets was probably a face-saving move more than anything. But yes, certainly. People could have died.
Again, it was as if Hans didn't hear him.
“The NATO High Command is furious with us.”
“Okay.”
“The American and English governments are furious with us. The governing body of the European Union is furious at NATO, and by extension, at us.”
“I get it, Hans. Everyone is angry with us.”
There was a long moment of quiet over the line.
“There was an explosion and fire in Belgrade this morning,” Hans said. “It happened near the location the White Swan left from. In fact, it was the same complex of buildings. There were also two shootouts there, a few hours apart, which left several people dead. I assume these were your operatives.”
“I have no information about that,” Miquel said reflexively.
“The city of Belgrade has offered a fifty thousand euro reward for information about the attackers and their whereabouts. The Serbian foreign minister is claiming that this was also NATO activity, and that the West is carrying out unprovoked attacks on their territory and sovereignty. They plan to take their case before the World Criminal Court in The Hague.”
Miquel shook his head. He had heard enough.
“What do you want, Hans?”
“Just this. I want you to know that I spoke with Margaux a little while ago. She is decidedly less enamored of you than she was in the very recent past. She agreed with me that Max Davidoff may not be as firm a hand as we need to oversee your unit. This has been such a setback on the global stage, such a humiliation, that she could hardly see it otherwise. She gave the final approval, she made the request to NATO, and I’m sure she regrets it terribly. Another mistake like this, and she could find her own job in jeopardy.”
