The Hotel Krcelic was similar to other pensiones Mike had stayed in. Pensiones were somewhere between a "regular" hotel and a bed and breakfast. Most resembled ancient inns and many of them dated from the Middle Ages. This one was in an old limestone-block building with vaguely baroque architecture that probably dated to the seventeenth or eighteenth century. The interior was heavy wood and dark, but the second-story room, one of only six in the whole "hotel," was well lit by a southern window. The bed was heavy wood with two eiderdown mattresses; in cold weather the upper mattress acted as a quilt and sleeping in one was like being wrapped in silken warmth. Mike looked at the bed longingly—he was on about forty hours of straight ops at this point—then hooked up the Geiger counter with the receiver run down his left arm and went down to the bar.
He'd just ordered a Johnny Walker Black, bourbon being unavailable, when a man sat down next to him.
"Mr. Duncan," the man said, holding out his hand, "I am pleased to finally meet you. Janus Dukhovic." The man was just above six feet tall, heavy-set, with close-spaced eyes and a thin face that stood out oddly from his heavy girth. He had black hair and black eyes that were cold and hard.
"Mr. Dukhovic," Mike said, shaking his hand and waving at the bartender. "Would you care for a taste to cut the dust?"
"Of course," Dukhovic said. "I'm always willing to drink for free."
When the drinks arrived, they moved to one of the booths and toasted.
"To IFOR," Dukhovic said dryly.
"To peace between nations," Mike replied just as dryly, taking a sip of the scotch. "What were you told?"
"That you want to look at the slave trade," Dukhovic said, shrugging and pulling out a Marlboro. As he lit it he continued. "I have toured many people around the slave trade. Most of them, I think, enjoy the sight," he added, smiling brutally and blowing out smoke. "I had two congressmen once that were so excited I think they nearly came in their pants."
"I'm sure," Mike said coldly. "I'm less interested in the girls than in how they are transported. I understand that the vehicle of choice is a nine-passenger Mercedes van, usually white, usually with tinted windows."
"This is true," Dukhovic said, puffing on the cigarette nervously and reevaluating the man across from him.
"I need to find as many of those vans as possible," Mike continued. "And walk near them. Ones that are carrying girls are lowest on the list. The girls are usually traded at Eagle Market, right? But they don't stay there overnight, true?"
"True," Dukhovic said, blowing out a smoke ring. "There are various houses in the town that their protectors keep."
"Where are the majority of the vans going to be?"
"During the day at the parking lot at Eagle Market," Dukhovic said, shrugging. "They tend to be clustered in the southwest quadrant."
Mike looked at his watch and frowned.
"We're going to be at this for a while," Mike said. "Maybe the rest of the day and well into the night. Are you up to that?"
"Of course," Dukhovic said, putting out his cigarette. "When do you want to start?"
"Now," Mike replied, downing his drink.
"There are dozens of protectors in the town," Dukhovic said as they drove through Herzjac in his ancient Peugeot, the springs complaining at the rough ride. Much of the town was paved with asphalt, but it was sketchily patched and sometimes seemed to have more potholes than pavement. "And dozens of houses. And all of the dealing does not occur in Eagle Market. Some of the finest girls never go there, but are traded at the houses."
"Van," Mike said, gesturing with his chin down an alleyway.
"You wish to stop?" Dukhovic said, looking for a parking place. The street was lined with cars, however.
"Just drop me off and circle around to the other block," Mike replied. "I'll walk down the alley and meet you there. Be aware that I'm, we're, probably going to be walking as much as driving."
Mike slid out of the Peugeot and through a couple of cars to the street. There were shops lining the street, some of them starting to close, and a few pedestrians. He strolled to the alleyway, then turned down it, looking around in interest. Most of the buildings in Herzjac were built of limestone block like the pensione, with a scattering of Soviet-era concrete. As they had driven, he had seen still visible signs of the fighting in the area, mostly bullet pockmarks, but also some homes that had clearly suffered from artillery shelling. There were a large number of tree stumps, a clear sign of a town that had been under siege.
The alleyway was cobbled, with many of the cobbles missing, and stunk of garbage and shit. There was debris scattered through it, mostly newspapers and garbage.
The van was parked by a side door to a three-story building on the far street. The door was metal and well set into the frame, not that he particularly cared. He was more interested in whether he could be observed as he walked past the van and casually raised his hand towards it, lifting it further to scratch his head. Nothing. He needed to get a radiation source to test it.
He kept walking to the far block and looked around for the Peugeot. Dukhovic had passed his position and was pulled in to a free parking place, so he strolled over to the car and got in.
"What I just did is what I'm here for," Mike said. "You're the expert, tell me the best way to do it."
"Over in Serb town is where most of the houses are," Dukhovic replied, thinking. "I'd suggest we get dinner, wait for the girls to start coming back to the houses and then walk around. It might take most of the night, maybe part of tomorrow, but we can cover all the vans that way."
"Security issues?" Mike asked as Dukhovic pulled out into traffic.
"There are some robbers in the area," the Croat said, lighting a cigarette as he drove. "And if it becomes obvious the protectors may get upset."
"Can you cover us on it?" Mike asked, looking around as they drove. The girls in this town were just as awesome as in the rest of Eastern Europe. Maybe it was something in the water?
"No," Dukhovic said shortly, blowing smoke out the window. "When the market was first set up, the routes had every nation plying their trade. Bulgarians were prominent, but they didn't dominate or anything. But about five years back, the Chechens started getting into it in a big way and there was . . . call it a slave war. Lots of killing. Not as bad as the real wars, but very bad and very bad for the trade. Anyway, now most of the protectors are fucking Chechens. I got out when I saw it coming, but a bunch of my friends who stayed in the business are dead from the damned Chechens."
"Same thing happened in the U.S., twice," Mike said. "The cocaine trade in the southeastern U.S. used to be mainly internal. They received their shipments and distributed, but the guys who ran the internal distribution were mostly American background. Heavy Mafia influence, but even that wasn't dominant. Then, well, there was this thing called the Mariel Boatlift in the 1970s, under that bastard idjit Carter. Castro agreed to let people who were 'longing for freedom' come to the United States. What he really did was empty out his prisons. Not even the political prisons, just the prisons with all his real criminals in them. Burglars, murderers, rapists, armed robbers. So south Florida got about ten thousand criminals dropped on it, really brutal ones. They quickly took over the drug trade. Anyone who got in their way they just eliminated without making any fuss about it at all.
"Then in the 1980s, when the crack wave hit, the Columbians came in, heavy. They had soldiers who were trained in their civil war and it was even more brutal than when the Marielitos took over. Lots of use of automatic weapons, which had been fairly unusual up to that time. They're still in control. So I know what you mean."
They had dinner in a small restaurant, eating a sort of stew that wasn't too bad. There was dark bread with it that was particularly good, as was the red wine. Mike wasn't sure what the meat in the stew was but he'd learned not to ask too many questions about foreign food. Fortunately, Europe wasn't into dog and cat the way the Orient was.
After finishing off the bottle of wine and a pastry something like baklava, they got back in the car and headed for "Serb town," Dukhovic chain-smoking the whole way.
Mike could tell right away that this was one of the older parts of the town. The streets were narrow as hell and the alleys were overhung by the buildings. Some of them were simple enough to date back to the late medieval period. There were some Soviet architecture buildings as well; the cheap concrete the Soviets used was famous for being cracked and worn by time.
They found an open parking place, got out and started walking.
There were a few people walking the streets; from their hurried walk Mike guessed that they were on the way home and just hoping to get there before being mugged. The muggers and drug dealers were in evidence, standing on street corners or in the shadows of the alleys. But Mike and Dukhovic were clearly not their sort of target. Mike was on full orange alert as he walked, and his attitude was easy enough to read. It was a sort of crackling tension that said: "This may be your turf. But I'm a big dog and just passing through so don't get busy." Even the junkies they saw gave them a wide berth.
Besides the drug dealers, junkies, losers and thugs, there were lots and lots of white vans. They seemed to be everywhere, parked on the streets, parked in the alleys, sitting in lots by apartment buildings. Many of them had license plates from other countries: Russia, Georgia, Bulgaria, Ukraine. Mike got tired of trying to keep up, but he also didn't want to double up, so he wrote down a bit of the tag number of each as they passed.
They stayed at it all night, covering just about every street in Serb town, watching the street people gradually fade away into the night.
"I am getting quite tired," Dukhovic said towards dawn.
"I've been up for about fifty-six hours," Mike replied. "If I can keep going, so can you. Have we covered the whole area?"
"There is a section of small warehouses," Dukhovic said, yawning and pointing. "That way, about two kilometers. Usually not many protectors over there, but they sometimes use the houses along the river."
"Well, I'm willing to ride," Mike said, looking around. "The car's about three blocks that way, right?"
"Yes," Dukhovic replied, heading towards the car. "What is it you are looking for? I see that you are waving a device at the vans."
"The Chechens stole some radioactive isotopes from the Russians," Mike lied. "Not enough to make much of a radiological bomb, but we think they're planning something like it. The device is a radiation detector."
"Don't they have those sorts of things on helicopters?" Dukhovic asked, confused and tired.
"Yeah," Mike said. "But nobody thinks they're coming here except me. I guess the detectors are all being used in Russia."
They got in the car and drove around the section of warehouses, looking for white vans. These buildings were almost all Soviet-style architecture, running close to the river, which had a small port. Finally, Mike spotted a van on a side street and waved Dukhovic to stop.
He got out and walked down the street, casually, as he had at least a hundred times that night. As he waved his arm at the van, though, his ear was practically blasted by a screech from the Geiger counter. He could vaguely see into the van as he passed, and it had had the seats removed. It also had a Russian license plate. Pay dirt.
He continued walking to the far end, though, just another night person on the way home. Or, as it may be, going down to the river. The warehouses petered out short of the road that paralleled the river and there were more of the "older" buildings along there, these showing particular abuse from the war. He waved Dukhovic into a parking place and got in.
"What time do they start to move the girls?" Mike said, looking around. There were a few cars starting to move on the streets as the day people went to their jobs.
"A little after eight," Dukhovic said. "That van doesn't make sense where it is, though. These houses might hold girls; there's a brothel down the street," he added, pointing. "But all there are up that street are warehouses."
"Well, it's radioactive as hell," Mike replied, thinking. "If I don't come back, call Northcote and tell him to send in IFOR."
He got out and walked back up the street, examining the warehouse without really looking at it. There was a small personnel door and a much larger roll-up door. The personnel door was metal and probably locked.
However, SEALs had access to some pretty obscure schools and one of them had covered "discreet entry." He didn't see any signs of life in the warehouse, no lights, no sound, so he slipped up to the door and slid out a set of picklocks.
It had been years since he'd really practiced with picklocks and it took him forever to get the door open. But finally the lock clicked over. He put the picklocks away and drew his sidearm, carefully screwing on the suppressor. That done, he slid it into the back of his pants and stepped through the door.
The room had a large crane system rolled over by the back wall, a large forge on the far left-hand side, several large metal tables, a drill press and an office on the right, near the door he had entered. There were five men in the room, cleaning up. Two of them were wearing heavy rubber gloves and appeared to be picking up bits of metal off the floor while two others were sweeping up the floor. The fifth turned and regarded him balefully for a moment, shifting so as to be behind one of the metal tables. There was a strong smell in the air that he couldn't quite place, but it reminded him of shooting rooms. Melted lead, that was it. It made him feel quite at home.
Nadhim Medein looked up in surprise and annoyance as a Westerner walked in the door. Nadhim was from Yemen and had been a member of one terrorist group or another since he was a teenager. He had first joined the Popular Front for the Revolutionary Jihad in Yemen then traveled to the Tribal Areas in Pakistan where he attended jihadi madrassas. Eventually he was picked to aid the Taliban in their jihad for control of Afghanistan. He had been in the Taliban in Afghanistan on September 11, 2001, when the Great Martyrs had brought down the Towers of the Great Satan and had danced in joy with all the other Taliban at the news. He loved, still, to watch the video of the towers falling.
But he had also experienced, firsthand, the vengeance of the Great Satan and eventually fled Afghanistan to continue the jihad where it might bear less bitter fruit. He had fought in Fallujah with Al Islam and had been in Syria when this mission was formed. All he knew about the mission was that a bomb had been constructed in this building and he was to clean up so that IFOR would have no evidence of what had been done there. It was not the fiercest job in the world, but one that had to be done quickly and surely. Nadhim Medein was a soldier of the jihad who was known to be quick and sure. So he had been asked to participate and, after ensuring that it was a mission that would be useful to the work of Allah, he had agreed.
And he was sure he had locked the front door, but the man just opened it up and walked in. He was unarmed, apparently an American from the dress and walk. Nadhim was sure they had been discovered, but he tried to dissemble.
"How did you get in here?" the fifth man said as the others stopped what they were doing.
"Is Mr. Budak here?" Mike asked, ignoring the question.
"There is no one called Budak here," the man said, reaching down. "How did you get in here?"
"The door was open," Mike said, stepping forward to place himself by one of the tables. "I'm looking for Dzore Budak. He said he would be here."
"Well, he's not," the man said, his hands out of sight behind the table. "You need to go."
"What are you doing?" Mike answered, looking puzzled. "This is the warehouse of Dzore Budak, isn't it?"
"Get out," the man said, lifting up an AK as the others began diving behind tables and the large forge.
Rifles are hard to lift quickly but pistols are very quick indeed, and before the AK could come up all the way the silenced pistol had targeted the man's chest. Mike put a round into either side of the chest and dropped behind the table, turning it over with a massive heave as the others pulled out rifles from their hiding places.
Asfaw Rabah watched in shock as Nadhim was cut down by the American, then reached under the worktable and pulled out his AK. He could not believe that Nadhim had been killed so easily. Nadhim was a legend in the Jihad and his stories of fighting the Dar Al Harb throughout the world had passed the slow times on this mission. It made Asfaw incredibly angry that so great a man had died in such an ignominious way.
Asfaw was from Saudi Arabia, the only son in a family of five. His parents were not particularly devout, to his way of thinking, and did not support his choice to join the jihad. But when he was fifteen he had gone with some friends to hear the words of the Mullah Yahya Mahad, one of the many Wahabbist preachers who made their living bringing the Word of God to the Dar Al Islam along the road to Mecca. At the time the forces of the Great Shaitan were still infesting the Holy Lands, their main base within a few hundred miles of the Holy City. Until that time, Asfaw had never thought what a sin against Allah it was to have the Crusader forces so close to the Holy City. The mullah, though, had thought long and hard upon it and he pointed out how very angry Allah must be.
From that day forward, Asfaw had pledged himself to rid the Holy Lands of the Crusader forces, wherever that might be. He had been picked up by the Saudi police in a demonstration against the Crusaders and, while his family had managed to get him out of prison, he had been forced to leave his home country. He had added to his pledge the vow to eventually throw down the corrupt House of Saud who had allowed the Crusaders into the Holy Lands and had joined the Jihadi Al Islam with that purpose in mind. With the fall of the kaliphate in Afghanistan he had been forced to go to Syria, and it was there he met Nadhim and been recruited for this mission.
Asfaw held the AK by his hip, as Nadhim himself had taught him, pointing it at the table the cowardly infidel had ducked behind and blasting the top as the weapon bucked in his hands. The weapon, stupidly, ran out of rounds and he reached under the table again for his spare magazine. He had his head down and never saw the American peek around the table . . .
Mike heard the rounds hit the top of the heavy working table and one punch through as he rolled to the left side of the table and peeked out. One of the terrorists was standing in the middle of the room, reloading after a "spray and pray" so Mike targeted two rounds right through his breast bone, spaced no more than a quarter's width apart.
Asfaw felt the rounds in his chest like two punches and a sharp pain in his back. His legs gave out from under him as the spinal cord was severed, and he dropped the AK and the spare magazine as he fell, his face striking the ground, hard. His nose was broken, he was sure, and, as his vision faded, he thought that his mother would be very angry at him for breaking his nose . . .
One of the terrorists was running to the right, heading for the crane for a better vantage point. Mike shot at him but missed as the target dove behind the crane. He reloaded, considering the situation, then popped straight up.
This received fire from behind one of the tables, also turned over, from the forge and then from the crane. He burst out of cover to the left, rounds cracking around him as the terrorists fired off most of their clips, and slid to a stop on his stomach behind the last table in the room. As he did the Geiger counter started screaming: the metal shavings on the floor were hot as blazes. At that realization, he popped up to his feet, quick. He duck-walked forward, trying to keep his balls away from the shavings. The Geiger was still screaming from the dust and shit on his clothes, so he yanked the earbud out and ignored it, then leaned out, looking for targets.
Zuhair Adil put his last magazine in the weapon and considered what to do. Nadhim and Asfaw were probably dead. He had seen Nadhim shot and had heard the chuffs from the American's silenced weapon and the sound of Asfaw's weapon clattering to the ground. It was a great thing to die in the Service of Allah, but it was a greater thing to kill the infidel at the same time. Killing, in this case, meant staying alive long enough to do so.
Zuhair was seventeen, a Bosnian Muslim who had been too young to join the jihad against the Serbs. But after the war was over the Wahabbists had come in to rebuild the mosques of Bosnia that the Serbs had defiled, bringing with them their extremist brand of Islam. Zuhair was an orphan of the war; his father had been a shopkeeper killed by the Serbs and his mother had disappeared when they were refugees. He had been taken into a madrassa funded by the International Council for Muslim Charities, a Wahabbist charity funded primarily by Saudi oil money, and it was there that he had been taught the truth of Islam, that Mohammed had declared that the whole world must be in submission to the will of Allah and that the way of jihad against the Dar Al Harb was the highest calling of the Muslim.
He had been recruited by one of the mullahs of the madrassa to assist in this mission, which was simple enough: clean up the warehouse and make sure no one got into it until the clean-up was complete. He was told that there might be trouble, but he had thought they would have some warning. And he very much would prefer not to die. He realized that as he considered what to do. Dying for Allah was all well and good to shout at the madrassa. But facing it, in real life, was a different thing. He would gladly kill a Serb if he had a chance. They had killed his mother and father, after all. But this was no place to die and no way to do it. All he wanted was out. But to do that meant either surrendering, which would look very bad, or making it to the door. To do that, he had to know where the American was. So he leaned around the forge, searching for him. As he did, he saw the American, around the side of a table, doing the same thing, and he lifted his rifle in terror, pointing it at him and yanking the trigger . . .
The tango by the forge was leaning out, also, and fired at him as he came around the side. But all the rounds went high, so Mike put a round through his exposed forehead, spreading the terrorist's limited brains all over the back wall. He slid back, then lifted himself straight up over the barrier. None of the terrorists were in sight, so he reloaded, thinking . . .
Imad Al-Kurbi was annoyed. He had fired off two full magazines at the American, carefully holding the weapon with one hand on the pistol grip and the other on top of the barrel to keep it on target as he had been taught. But he still could not hit the slippery infidel.
Imad was from the Tribal Territories of Pakistan, one of seven children, three sons, of a small mountain farm. He had been raised with an AK in his hand and considered himself a good shot, so it was doubly annoying that he had been unable to hit the American. He had left the farm when he was fifteen, entering a Wahabbist madrassa in Islamabad. There was no work in Pakistan and the madrassa fed him both food and the Word of Allah. He had left the madrassa at seventeen and, paid by the jihad, had traveled first to Afghanistan to fight the Crusader invaders, then to Iraq where he had met Nadhim who was another veteran of Afghanistan. They had planted bombs to fight the Crusaders for a year before the Crusaders flooded the country with heavy forces and began destroying the jihad in that country. When it was clear they were going to be caught soon, Nadhim suggested that they travel to Syria where jihadis were being recruited for international missions.
This mission was supposed to be simple. But it was clear that the Americans had discovered them and he had to kill this one before the word got out. However, he was out of rounds. Nadhim, though, had never gotten off a shot, so he should have a full weapon.
With that thought, Imad quietly set his empty weapon on the ground and lifted himself on fingers and toes and leopard-crawled around the table he had been using for cover. He could hear faint sounds from the American, a magazine being slid out and then another into the weapon, and he thought about sight angles. If he crossed the open area and around to the far side of the table Nadhim had been using for cover, he would stay out of sight. He got to his feet and, crouching over, darted across the gap, ducking behind the far side of the table.
Mike duck-walked sideways, keeping the room covered as he sidled over to the forge. He bent down and picked up the terrorist's AK and switched it for his pistol. There were ten rounds left in the magazine and no more mags. That meant the other terrs might be out of rounds.
Imad listened to the faint sound of the AK magazine being removed and then either it or another being reinserted and considered what to do. Nadhim's weapon was on the far side of the table, maybe in reach. He lay on his stomach and stretched his arm out, hooking at the trigger guard of the weapon . . .
There had been one of the terrorists behind the overturned table, but he was gone. His weapon was on the ground but he wasn't there. Mike had moved left, so the terr had probably moved right. That meant he was behind the drill press, one of the overturned tables or in the office. It was unlikely he had made it to the crane. And there was the one left behind the crane, of course.
The back side of the drill press was just out of sight, so Mike sidled that way, AK at tactical present, and peeked around the corner. No "Middle Eastern Male" there. He quietly peeked over the table to see if the terrorist was on the far side, keeping half an eye on the crane. He should have taken fire from there by now, but he hadn't so the terr was probably out of rounds.
There were two more sides to the drill press and Mike checked those, wondering where the target had hidden himself.
"Olly olly oxenfree!" Mike called tauntingly. "Come out, come out wherever you are!"
Imad didn't speak English very well, but he recognized the taunting tone. Let the American taunt; by sliding his body almost fully under the table, he had managed to get one finger on Nadhim's rifle and he could see the American's legs from his current position. He began to slide the AK slowly to him and winced at the metallic scraping sound . . .
Mike heard a magazine being surreptitiously removed then reinserted by the crane; he ducked down behind the table, waiting. As he did that he heard a metallic sound where the first terrorist had been standing: the tango he lost track of had been out of rounds and had snuck over to the leader type to get his full weapon. Most of the head terrorist's body was in sight, so the target must be on the far side of the table on his stomach, reaching under it for the weapon.
Mike dropped to his own stomach, looking under the table and, sure enough, there was the tango. He was half covered by the body of the leader and snatched the weapon to him when he saw Mike's sudden movement. They locked eyes for a moment, the terrorist raising the AK to fire under the table and then Mike shot him between the eyes.
All Majali Fu'ad wanted was out. Majali was from Egypt and had been a student in Germany until the money for college ran out. He hated Cairo, where there was no decent work for a college-trained young man and very few distractions unless you were married. So he stayed in Europe, doing odd jobs, until he ended up in a madrassa in Bosnia of all places. The madrassa fed him, and if the food came with a healthy dosing of the Word of Allah he was willing to accept that as long as his bowl was filled. He'd taken this "mission" because it was just another odd job, like dozens of others he'd done over the years since college. He'd only fired at the American because everyone else did so, and it gave him a sense of security to shoot the weapon. But now he was out of bullets and a long way from Cairo. If he managed to get to the door he was going back to Cairo, finding a job, any job, and never, ever leaving again. And if anyone said the word "jihad" in his presence, he was going to punch them out. He crouched down, his eyes fixed on the door, and as more firing broke out, he sprinted for the door . . .
Mike lifted up to the top of the table as he heard pounding feet, putting the last three rounds from the AK into the running terrorist who slid to a halt, leaving a trail of blood behind him. His arm twitched a bit and then he was still.
Majali lay on his face, feeling the blood flowing out of his chest, and tried to crawl to the door. It was a long way to Cairo, but he would crawl if he had to. He was cold and it would be warm in Cairo . . .
Mike lifted up and looked around, then switched the AK for the one the leader had had, checking the leader. The leader had probably lived for a few seconds based on the blood trail, but he was dead.
Mike checked the office, cautiously, then moved from one body to the next until he was sure they were all Dead Right There. And they were.
"I really could have used a prisoner, you know," Mike said, shaking his head in frustration. "One of you could have bothered to survive!"