Breath of Hell (Harry Bauer Book 8) Read online

  “We have photographs, and we are trying to get hold of the plans. It’s not easy. It is seventy-five feet long, has three decks and a bridge, two state rooms, four suites and an undefined number of cabins. It has a small cinema, two dining rooms and four lounges. Access is from a rear boarding deck. It has a skipper, a first mate and a crew of six, as well as two barmen, six maids and a butler. Then there are two engineers and Yushbaev’s security team who number four. All of whom are drawn from Russian elite special forces. HQ is drawing up a file as we speak.”

  “As we speak may be too slow.”

  He shook his head as he poured whisky into my glass and then his. “There is too much at stake to go blundering in all guns blazing, Harry. We need discipline and method.”

  “Sure.” I sipped the whisky and felt it warm me inside. “But discipline and method won’t be worth a damn if the colonel disappears into the Russian steppes or the Middle East.”

  He smiled at me, and after a moment said, “So we need to be disciplined and methodical, quickly.” He turned to Araminta. “Would you go to the office, please, and bring the file, such as it is right now, for Harry to peruse it? Call Pleasantville while you’re at it. Hurry them up and see if they have anything more.”

  “Sure.” She stood. “Don’t eat all the cheese.”

  I chewed on a dry cracker and a piece of stilton and watched her go inside.

  “Could I paraglide in once it’s at sea?”

  “Drop from a plane?” He made a doubtful face. “It would be hard to do without alerting the crew and the security team.”

  “Couple of air to surface rockets to the bows of the ship to distract them. I land on the stern and look for the colonel.”

  “No.” He sipped his whisky. “You are thinking like a soldier rather than an assassin. In the Atlantic or the Pacific you might pull it off. In the Med you are never quite far enough either from shipping or somebody’s coast guard. Those waters are intensely patrolled, by the British, the Spanish and the Italians. Not least because of the number of people attempting to sail across from Africa. The boat would be swarming with officials before you could get close to her.” He shrugged, “And then you’ve got the other problem.”

  “Extraction.”

  “Exactly. How the hell do we get you out of there?”

  “OK, drop me with a submersible…”

  “Too slow, those superyachts are fast.”

  Drop me ahead of it. I’ll intercept it. I place magnetic mines along the waterline. I pull myself aboard, take the colonel, blow in the side of the yacht, take a lifeboat and get the hell out of there.”

  “Having damaged the other lifeboats.”

  “You have someone pick us up in a seaplane.”

  “Not bad. But very risky, and no plan B. If you miss the intercept, you’ll be stranded in the middle of the Mediterranean with egg all over your face.”

  I stared at the glare of the reflected sun above the turquoise pool. I knew he was right and I knew I had to control my impulse to just do it. Who Dares Wins was our motto, but it belied the meticulous preparation and attention to detail that went before the daring. The wild berserker that lies at the heart of every SAS blade was only allowed to come out when all other avenues were closed. Then, if and when that happened, his opponents had a real problem on their hands. But the time for that had not come yet. I said:

  “Then I intercept them at Ano Koufonisi. How do I get there?”

  “Fly to Naxos. Hire a yacht there. It is only twenty to twenty-five miles from Naxos to Ano Koufonisi. If you average eight knots you should be there in about three hours or less.”

  I nodded, then smiled. He had obviously already thought it through and had it prepared. “Can you get a boat at this short notice?”

  He returned the smile. “It’s already booked, the Apollonis, a rather nice fifty-foot Hans 540E. She’ll give you eight to ten knots.”

  “Should be fun. You’ll be tracking the Bucephalus and you’ll let me know where and when she drops anchor.”

  “Of course. I’ve booked you in at Charlotte’s House, a boutique hotel near the beach at Koufonisia, the capital of the island. It’s not much of a capital, a cluster of holiday houses and a couple of restaurants. There is no car-hire there, but I spoke to Charlotte and she said she could arrange a Jeep for you.”

  We sat in silence for a while eating cheese and sipping whisky. Eventually he said, “What’s your plan?”

  “Get onboard, kill everybody, sink the yacht, bring the colonel home.”

  “Good…” He turned as Araminta emerged from the house with a fat file in her hands. As she sat he said, “The island is roughly circular, with Koufonisia located at its southernmost point. Curiously it is not a natural harbor, though a port has been constructed there and is, on the face of it, the most likely place for the Bucephalus to drop anchor.”

  Araminta had been leafing through the file as she spoke and now placed a satellite picture of the island on the table. She pointed at it.

  “Here, about a mile and a half from Koufonisia, is Pori Beach, the only natural harbor on the island. It happens to be nice and sandy too, with perfect transparent waters. There is no village, but there is a kind of small tourist resort nearby, Finikias, with a couple of private villas and a hotel on the beach. That’s the other place he might drop anchor.” She shrugged. “It’s more private and secluded, and if he needs anything from town, it’s less than five minutes in the launch.”

  “Pori Beach would make life a lot easier for me.”

  “For sure, and in the Jeep, if you put your foot down, you could be there in five or ten minutes.”

  “The million-dollar question now,” said the brigadier, “is, how are you going to get onboard?”

  I drained my glass and refilled it. “Our starting point is, either they invite me, or I intrude. The chances of their inviting me are remote. So I am not even going to entertain the idea. Which means I have to intrude. I can intrude in one of three ways, secretly, under false pretences, or I can storm the yacht.”

  Araminta raised an eyebrow at the brigadier. “A one-man storm. If it were anybody else, I’d laugh.” She turned to me. “How d’you plan to do that?”

  “Swim out at night. Plant magnetic mines forward on the hull. When they detonate, I come aboard aft on the landing platform, move fast to the cabins, kill Yushbaev, find the colonel and leave on the launch. I’d need an assault rifle with a grenade launcher, a P226, a knife...”

  “Extraction?”

  “I take her to my yacht, then rendezvous with a seaplane. Fly to Rome and pick up an air taxi to New York.”

  He stuck out his lower lip and raised his eyebrows. He looked at Araminta. “Sounds good to me. Any comments?”

  “It’s not exactly subtle and surgical. It will attract a lot of attention. The yacht will not sink into the cold, dark depths of the Atlantic. Those are shallow, transparent waters. It will sink eight or ten feet into clear, warm water. When they investigate the frogmen will find not only the pieces of mine on the seabed, they will also find bullet holes and casings, not to mention the bodies of the,” she glanced at me, “doubtless numerous victims shot to pieces by Captain Devastation here.”

  I sighed. “Gabriel Yushbaev is known to have connections with the Russian mob. There will be no way to trace whatever they find back to me or Cobra, and it will be assumed that he was attacked by a rival mob. Going in ninja will be much more difficult, require much more preparation and greatly increase the risk element. Not only that, it will put the colonel in greater danger than is necessary. I have to kill everyone on that yacht as quickly and efficiently as possible. That means mines, assault rifle and grenades.”

  The brigadier nodded. “I agree. Whom do we have in Greece who can provide the hardware?”

  Araminta suppressed a sigh. “Nikki Supplies, Athens.” She turned to me. “Make a list. You’ll need night vision goggles. If you’re going all out you might want some C4, ammo…”

 
“I got it,” I interrupted her as I wrote down the things I’d need. “How soon can I be out of here?”

  “Tomorrow afternoon. There’s just one thing.”

  “What?”

  “Yushbaev has a representative in Marbella who takes care of business for him in Spain. He’s not a Russian, he’s a Spanish lawyer by the name of Segundo Lopez. You want to find out where Yushbaev is headed after Koufonisi, this guy will know.”

  “If I ask him, first thing he’s going to do is call Yushbaev and tell him I’m after him.”

  She shrugged and squinted up at the sky, pursing her lips. I looked at the brigadier. He shook his head.

  “It’s a tricky one, Harry. I can’t advise you. We don’t condone killing people who are not targets, unless it is in self-defense.”

  I turned to Araminta. “This guy, Segundo?” She nodded. “Is he just a lawyer on a retainer, or…?”

  She was shaking her head before I’d finished. “No, no, no. This guy manages Yushbaev’s affairs here. He is not just a legal advisor. He is Yushbaev’s agent. That means when Yushbaev isn’t here, Segundo Lopez is Yushbaev.”

  I turned back to the brigadier. “There is too much at stake to pussyfoot around. I need to talk to this guy and get what information I can out of him.” To Araminta I said, “Where can I find him?”

  “It’s easier if I take you.” Then she frowned. “Are you up to this? A week ago we weren’t sure you’d make it through the night.”

  “I’ll make it through the night. You can put me in touch with this guy?”

  “I know him. I’ve been observing him for some time on behalf of the Company.”

  “The CIA are interested in him?”

  “Of course, they’re interested in Yushbaev, and Yushbaev’s point of entry into Europe is Segundo Lopez, via Marbella. So we have met at cocktail parties, events and a few real estate negotiations.”

  “You have his ear?”

  “Up to a point. If I tell him I have a deal for him, he’ll be interested enough to meet me.”

  “OK, tell him it has to be today because I’m going back to the States tonight.”

  She pulled out her cell and the brigadier stood. “I’ll leave you to it.” He hesitated. “I don’t need to tell you that once you have asked him the question…”

  I nodded. “I know. But if I need to choose between this asshole’s life and the colonel’s, I don’t need to wade through a lot of philosophical angst to reach my conclusion.”

  “Let me know when you’re ready and I’ll see you to the plane.”

  He walked toward the house. He must have been sixty-five if he was a day, but he was tall and strong and moved with the ease of an athlete. At the end of the table Araminta was saying, “Hey, Segundo, my man! How’s it hangin’?” She listened a moment and laughed. “Man! That’s gotta be painful! Listen, tío, I have a good friend here, he’s telling me about a sweet deal and right away I thought of you.” She listened and laughed. “You bet your sweet ass I’m getting a commission. Do I look stupid? But believe me, you are going to like this, and so are your people. You know what I am talking about. This is the Persil deal to end all… You don’t know what Persil is? Ariel? OK, Ariel. Yeah, yeah, washing powder. So this is the Ariel deal to end all Ariel deals.” She looked at me, sighed and rolled her eyes. “It’s a detergent, Segundo, a detergent. And it washes whiter, get it? You do the laundry with it…Jesus! Yeah, yeah, you got it. You wash money with it. That’s it…good boy.”

  I laughed quietly and she went on.

  “So, listen. Here’s the deal. This friend of mine has some land just above Sierra Blanca, roughly where the Quinta Golf Club is…?” She listened for a moment, sighing again. “No, shut up, Segundo. I haven’t finished. See, this friend of mine has secured a permit to build a casino on that land. Now, what he wants to do is sell the land to, say, some wealthy Russians, with a caveat in the contract which allows him to reinvest that money into building the casino on that land… Well maybe some other kind of partnership would be of interest to him, but we won’t know that unless we talk. But, Segundo? Don’t you even dream about cutting me out. I want my commission, capisci?”

  She winked at me and made like she was listening. Then started shaking her head.

  “Nah, that won’t do… Because he’s flying back to the States this evening… So shoot me! I heard about it this afternoon and the first thing I did was call my good friend Segundo. But hey, if you’re too damned busy to spare half an hour to talk, don’t sweat it. I’ll go and talk to Angeles… Oh,” she laughed, “Suddenly you have time, hijo de puta? Yeah, yeah. OK, half an hour. No, no, we’ll meet at Calle Albinone, at the Huerta del Fraile. You know it? Good, be there. Half an hour. And Segundo? This guy has to catch a plane, OK?” She hung up. “Let’s go talk to Segundo.”

  “What is the Huerta del Fraile?”

  “The Friar’s Orchard. It’s a big chunk of wasteland on the outskirts of the city. It used to be an orchard, now it’s just waiting for the market to pick up so somebody will buy it.”

  “And that’s on Albinone Street?”

  “Yup, and on the other side of Albinone Street is a pine forest, about half a mile long and a quarter of a mile across. It’s the basically the beginning of the Sierra Blanca, the mountains at the back of Marbella.” She held my eye a moment. “Don’t worry, it’s a good place for a quiet chat.”

  “What about his car?”

  “I’ll get in his car with him. He’ll like that. You follow. When the track starts to get rough, we stop. You have your talk. When you’re done we leave him in the car with a used condom and a call girl’s number in his wallet. The number will be out of use and untraceable.”

  “Where do you plan to get a used condom?”

  She frowned. “Oh, well, I thought maybe you…” I scowled and she laughed. “It’s part of the CIA’s basic tool kit. Didn’t you know?”

  “You done?”

  “Don’t be silly, stupid, we leave a half-opened condom on the seat beside him. We don’t want to go leaving DNA all over the place, do we?”

  “You’ve done this before, I can tell.”

  She gave a small shrug with a tilt of the head. “Yeah, we tend not to blow things up so much, you know? We’re a little more subtle, a suppressor, a knife, bit of misdirection… You know the kind of thing.”

  “Ninja.”

  She snapped her fingers and pointed at me. “Ninja.”

  Three

  The sun was growing hot and there was a buzz of cicadas over the olive groves that Araminta had called the Huerta del Fraile. I climbed out of the Cherokee and leaned against the hood, staring down the potholed blacktop, waiting for Segundo Lopez to appear. The passenger door slammed and Araminta appeared walking with her arms crossed and her eyes squinting slightly behind black Wayfarers. I nodded toward the woodland that started immediately at the side of the road on our left.

  “Is that it, in there?”

  “Yup. A little farther down there’s a dirt track that leads in among the trees. About two hundred and fifty yards in there is a small clearing. A car could roll down there and be lost to view, maybe for a few days.”

  “You got the whole thing figured out already?”

  “Yeah, well, while you were sleeping the sleep of the undead, some of us were working.”

  “So if you had this all figured out already, how come the brigadier didn’t mention any of it?”

  She looked at me like she wanted to slap me around the back of the head. “You still asleep, Harry? In case you hadn’t noticed, Segundo Lopez isn’t Lex Luthor. He’s a bad man, but he is not guilty of crimes against humanity. So Cobra cannot get its hands dirty with his blood. This is operational, like Bill Hartmann or Hirsch. We do this, not Cobra.”

  “So you didn’t tell the brigadier.”

  “That’s why he got up and left.”

  I nodded. “OK. Your man is late.”

  “He’s Spanish, the Spanish are always late. Spain will arr
ive late to Judgment Day. The world will be full of smoldering embers and brimstone, and there will be forty million Spaniards looking around, shrugging and saying, ‘Que pasa? Guo’ happening?’”

  “You weren’t like this in Puerto Rico. You were different.”

  “That was an act.” She grinned. “I did my homework. I knew what you’d like.”

  The sound of a car made us look down the road. A cream Range Rover approached and stopped a few feet in front of us. The door opened and a short man in a blue suit swung down. He had a yellow bow tie with dark spots on it, and blue-black hair going slightly bald on top, like a monk who’d left his order, and his tonsure was growing back. He strutted toward Araminta with a big grin on his face and his right hand held out.

  “Araminta, Araminta! You gonna make me crazy!” He laughed and looked at me. “Always in the last minute! Womens! Womens are always like this! Last minute!” He held out his hand. “Segundo Lopez, at your service.”

  I took his hand and pumped it enthusiastically. “Good to meet you, Segundo. We have a pretty sweet deal here.” I pointed up in the direction of the woods. “Right up there. But I am going to need some help to pull it off. Araminta says you’re my man.”

  He spread his hands wide, hunched his shoulders and grinned. “We gonna talk! Tell me what you want. I tell you if I can do it.”

  Araminta pushed off the Jeep and slapped Segundo on the shoulder. “You can do it. Let’s go have a look. You and me’ll go in your Range Rover.” She turned to me and winked. “You follow on behind.”

  Segundo was nodding. “Yeah, OK, OK.”

  I followed them and after about fifty yards they slowed, pulled off the road and started bumping and rolling up a narrow track among tall pine trees, wild shrubs and ferns. We ground through the dappled shade, lurching over rocks and channels gauged into the dry, red earth by rain and wind, and scorching heat. After four or five minutes the Range Rover slowed and pulled off the track, in among the trees, and stopped. I pulled in behind it, blocking the exit, and swung down from the cab. Segundo was climbing down too, and Araminta was walking around in front of the hood. Segundo had his back to me and was saying, “We cannot do this over a map in a bar?”