Zero 22, p.19
Zero 22, page 19
part #8 of Danny Black Series
‘It might be too late.’
‘Make sure it isn’t. Tell him that we know about Poliakov and the deepfakes. And Black, you can expect interference. Most likely Russian, possibly Wagner Group. They might be on site to finish the General off in the event that you’re unsuccessful.’
At the mention of the Wagner Group, Danny clenched his jaw. He glanced over at the two Russian men at the nearby table, and he flashbacked to the final moments of the Zero 22 op. ‘Roger that,’ he said.
The line went dead.
The alarm clock by the General’s bed read eight o’clock.
There were two kimonos in the bedroom. There was the one that had slid from the General’s shoulders to the floor as Bethany had undressed him. And there was the one hanging on the back of the door. Bethany had identified it the moment they had entered the bedroom, and her strategy for the next few minutes had formed itself.
The bedroom was large and comfortable. There was a dressing table and a writing desk and two deep armchairs. The curtains were closed. There was dusky pink mood lighting. His clothes were folded with military neatness on a high-backed chair. The shiny brown brogues were next to them on the floor, precisely square to the chair. The bed dominated the room. Emperor size, a modern four-poster frame without drapes. Plump pillows and embroidered cushions. Complementary chocolates on the pillows. The General was naked, apart from the military ID tags around his neck. He stood between Bethany and the bed, a schoolboy grin on his old face.
‘Lie down,’ she told him.
He did as she said, propping himself up on the pillows.
‘I’m going to give you a little show,’ she said.
‘Sounds swell,’ said the General. ‘I like to take in a show.’
‘You’ll love this one,’ she said, and she started to remove her clothes. Her jacket first, which she dropped on to the floor next to the General’s kimono. Then her blouse, which she removed to reveal her black bra. She slipped off her shoes. One of them she kicked across the floor. The other, the shoe with the razor blade, she kept upright and accessible. She wormed her way out of her skirt so that now she was standing there in her underwear. The General’s appreciation was evident on his face and elsewhere. Bethany gave him a girlish twirl, mussing her hair as she did so, and he said: ‘Bravo! Hottest ticket in town!’
‘I thought you’d enjoy it,’ she said. She touched the tip of her tongue to her front teeth and made a coquettish look skywards as though a naughty idea had just come to her. ‘Let’s play a game,’ she said.
Danny felt his blood burning. He had no way of contacting Bethany and he didn’t know the General’s room number. He was momentarily frozen, paralysed by his lack of options. What the hell was happening? How could he stop Bethany in time?
He looked across the room. The General’s guy was still slouched in his chair, glass of mineral water in hand. He would know where the General was. Suddenly Danny had options. Could he be persuaded to give up the General’s room number? No chance. Just asking the question would surround Danny with a cadre of suspicious American soldiers. Could he be coerced, physically? Perhaps. But that would mean getting him on his own and, if he was well trained, the process could take some time. Danny didn’t have time. So he needed another idea.
He stood up and hurried towards the far exit and out of the bar.
The belts from the two kimonos were soft and satiny to the touch. But they were strong, too. Bethany could tell as she pulled one of them taut before wrapping it along one arm. She draped the other over her left shoulder so that it covered her bra strap. Then she walked towards the bed, where the General was breathing heavily. He reminded Bethany of a hungry dog waiting for his dinner. And just as a hungry dog will perform any trick for food, she knew that the General was now lost to the moment. The job was as good as done.
‘Give me your hand, baby,’ she said.
The General did as he was told. His palm was warm and a little sweaty. He was entirely compliant as she tied one end of the loose kimono cord to his wrist and the other to the corresponding bedpost. She put her face close to his, as if to kiss him, but drew away at the last moment, teasing him. She sashayed round to the other side of the bed, slowly unwrapping the other kimono cord from around her arm. She didn’t even have to ask him for his other hand. He offered it to her and was silent and meek as she tied it to the opposite bedpost. She stepped back to look at him. His Viagra had done its work and it occurred to her that under other circumstances her best option would be to present this as a sex game gone wrong. But she didn’t have the time for anything sophisticated. She wanted the job done, and to be out of here. So the razor was her friend.
The General’s legs were still free, but without the use of his arms he was effectively out of action. She couldn’t drop her pretence just yet; she didn’t want his suspicions to be raised and for him to start struggling and making noise. So she continued to sashay as she turned her back on him and walked over to where his clothes were neatly folded, and picked up his pair of pale blue briefs. She turned and held them up, winking at him suggestively. His brow wrinkled, half confused, half amused, as if to say, ‘what are you going to do with those?’
She walked back towards him.
Danny found the fire alarm call point in an instant. It was situated at the bottom of the stairwell, just to the right of the elevator. A glass panel framed in red, the instruction to break the glass in case of emergency written in both English and Arabic. He checked his surroundings. Nobody was watching, so he smashed his elbow into the panel.
The response was immediate: a deafeningly loud alarm, high pitched and quickly alternating between two notes. Danny hurriedly climbed the stairs to the first floor. A military man would know never to use the lift if there was a fire, and so he figured that the General’s guy would be there any minute, either to head straight to a room on the first floor or to continue up the stairs.
It took about twenty seconds. Guests were already hurrying from their bedrooms, pushing past Danny as he loitered on the half-landing, trying to zone out the ringing sound of the fire alarm. The General’s guy pushed against the tide, taking two steps at a time. He paid no attention to Danny as he passed. He was looking up, not back, so he didn’t see Danny follow him.
Bethany stood by the side of the bed and leaned over. She squeezed the General’s nose between her thumb and forefinger, and she knew that, at last, he was beginning to realise that something was not right. His body tensed up and, looking down, she could see that his excitement was waning. She held his underwear close to his mouth. He would open it eventually, either to breathe or to shout out. When he did that, she would stuff the briefs inside and silence him.
But the General was a smart guy. He knew what would happen when he opened his mouth. So for now, he kept it clenched. He started to kick violently and to strain against the kimono cords, but Bethany had tied perfect double constrictor knots. She noticed how his hands reddened as the blood supply to them became restricted. A minute passed. His face was becoming red too. His eyes bulged. She kept the pressure on his nose, keeping the nostrils shut. And then it happened. He needed to breathe. He parted his lips but kept his teeth clenched as he tried to inhale. That was all she needed. She stuffed the underpants hard inside his mouth, crumpling them into a ball, forcing them between his teeth and pushing them to the back of the throat. He tried to bite her fingers, but the pressure of the material against the back of his mouth made him gag and open his mouth even wider, so she was able to force all the material inside before withdrawing her hand.
He was kicking in a frenzy now, arching his body up as he writhed and struggled against the cords. The mattress shifted underneath him, but Bethany wasn’t worried. He wasn’t going anywhere. She hurried back round to where her clothes were piled on the floor. It would be better to put them on before she did it. Then she could get out of there the moment his throat was cut and she had confirmed that he was dead. She felt awkward as she dressed, and she realised she was nervous. She breathed deeply and slowed herself down. Buttoned up her blouse and smoothed her skirt. Then she bent over, folded back the inner sole of her shoe and withdrew the razor blade. She realised that the General had been making a regular, metronomic squeal which she had barely noticed as she prepared herself. It grew more frenzied as she held the razor up to the light, establishing that both sides were sharp. A numbness came over her. It was a familiar sensation. Her body and mind protecting itself from what was to come. She’d been holding up the razor for longer than she intended. She lowered it, focused on the squealing man on the bed, and approached him.
The blare of the fire alarm made her whole body jolt. The numbness instantly dissolved. She spun round, half expecting somebody to burst into the room. But there was nobody. Just her and the General. He had stopped squealing and writhing. He was staring round the room, as if the fire alarm was a physical presence he was trying to catch sight of, as if it was somebody arriving to rescue him from the horror. But then he seemed to realise that the opposite might be true. That the alarm might speed things up. His writhing became more extreme. His squeals more desperate.
Bethany reached the edge of the bed. With the heel of her left hand she pushed against the side of the General’s head to expose his neck fully. The tendons were tense and strained, and she could just make out the high-pressure pulse of the carotid artery. One cut was all it would need. One deft slice. She raised a corner of the duvet with the free fingers of her razor hand, ready to protect herself from the initial spurt of blood.
‘Good night, General O’Brien,’ she said.
The General’s guy left the stairwell at the third floor. The fire alarm was loudest in the corridors. Tiny red warning lights flashed in the ceiling panels. There were four other guests in the corridor, hurrying from their rooms towards the stairs. It was enough movement for Danny’s presence to be unremarkable to the guy if he even noticed him. Danny followed him to the end of the corridor where he took a left and disappeared from Danny’s field of view. When Danny saw him again, he was holding a key card to a panel three doors down on the left. The door clicked open and he entered.
Danny ran. He caught the door a fraction of a second before it clicked shut, and burst into the room. It was a suite. With a single glance he took in the furniture, the whisky glasses at the bar, the two doors leading off. Only one was open, and the General’s guy was standing in the door frame. Danny could tell from his posture – shoulders hunched, legs slightly apart – that he was aiming a weapon. He hurled himself across the room towards the door frame and launched his whole body at the guy, slamming into him with a crashing momentum. The guy fell forwards to the ground, but not before releasing a round. It was a handgun round, unsuppressed, and its retort, merged with the fire alarm, was disorientating. Danny let the full weight of his body crash down on to the soldier to stop him getting to his feet again and taking another shot. As he fell, he took in the room. He saw the General, naked and tied to the bed. He saw Bethany, one hand on his head, something in her other hand, looking back over her shoulder. He saw where the bullet from the guy’s handgun had slammed into the wall just behind her, throwing out a shower of plaster. And he saw Bethany turn to the General again and raise her right arm. He realised she was moving in to cut his throat.
‘NO!’ he shouted. ‘LEAVE HIM!’
The General’s guy was strong. Despite Danny’s weight on his back, he was pushing himself up with his free hand and he still had a good grip of his weapon. He was aiming at Bethany again, his finger on the trigger. Danny slammed a heavy clenched fist on to his elbow joint. The joint clicked as it broke, and the guy yelled in pain and the gun fired. But Danny had compromised his aim and the bullet flew harmlessly under the bed and splintered into the skirting board on the far side.
‘What the hell?’ Bethany shouted, her voice tense.
‘Instructions from London,’ Danny shouted back. ‘He’s not what they thought he was.’
The General’s guy started shouting for help from underneath Danny, each word followed by a noisy inhalation of breath, shaky on account of his broken elbow.
Danny didn’t have time to explain. He bore this guy no malice. He was Yank soldier, doing his job, and he didn’t deserve to lose his life because of it. But Danny needed him out of the way. He raised his own elbow and crashed it down on the back of the guy’s skull. His head jarred hard against the floor and his body went limp. He’d be out for a good few minutes. Danny loosened the weapon from his hand – it was a Sig Sauer M17, nine millimetre, sand coloured. He stood up and strode over to where Bethany was still perched on the edge of the bed. The General was still wearing his military ID tags, and his eyes were bulging. Something was stuffed in his mouth and his arms were straining against two dressing-gown cords tied to the timber uprights of his four-poster. Danny didn’t need to know how Bethany had got him into this position. He just needed to get him out of it. ‘Give me that,’ he said, indicating the razor blade.
‘What’s happening?’ Bethany demanded.
‘No time,’ Danny said. He grabbed the razor and quickly cut through the two cords. The General rolled away from them, almost falling off the bed. He regained his footing and removed the object obstructing his throat. He gagged as he pulled out a fistful of material and Danny realised it was his own underpants. He raised the Sig and aimed it at the naked man. ‘Get your clothes on,’ he said.
‘What in the—’
‘Get them on! I haven’t got time to explain. I think there are Wagner Group operatives in the hotel, and I think they’ve been ordered to kill you if we fail.’
‘Who the hell are you?’
‘British SAS,’ Danny said, figuring that it would hold some weight with a man like this. ‘We know about Poliakov and the deepfakes.’ He said it with bullish confidence, hoping to hide that the CO’s instructions made no sense to him.
Whatever they meant, Danny’s words hit their mark. The General nodded, but then he pointed at Bethany. ‘What about her? Who the hell—’
‘Long story, no time. Get dressed if you want to live. Do it. Now.’
He nodded and hurried over to where his clothes were neatly piled. He was plainly traumatised as he tried to get dressed. He was having trouble coordinating his limbs. When Bethany moved towards Danny, the General visibly shrank away even though they were separated by the width of the room.
‘We need to get back to the vehicle,’ Danny said. ‘As long as the fire alarm is ringing, we should be able to leave by any exit. There’s a fire exit at the bottom of the stairwell. That’ll be better than the main entrance. Less people to see us go. But we might encounter hostiles on the way down, so I need you and the General to stay behind me.’
‘Why?’ Bethany said. Her voice had an edge. She was wired. Hardly surprising. ‘Because I can’t take care of myself?’
‘No,’ Danny said, and he held up the Sig. ‘Because I’m the one with the firearm and I think we’re going to need it.’ He bent over the unconscious soldier and felt around his abdomen. He located two spare clips for the Sig. He could tell by the weight that they were standard seventeen-round magazines. That gave him thirty-four shots, plus whatever was already in the handgun. He stole the clips and put them into his pocket. The General was worming his feet into his shiny brown brogues. ‘Ready?’ Danny said.
‘Ready,’ they said in unison.
And as soon as they’d said it, the fire alarm stopped. There was a heavy silence. Danny swore. Getting out of here was suddenly ten times more difficult. He considered the possible routes. They were on the third floor. They needed to get to the ground floor. The lift was out of the question. Too confined. He knew from the hotel plan on the exhibition board that there was only one staircase. They would have to use it to get back down to the ground floor. Once there, it would be better to avoid the main entrance, but he didn’t think they could avoid going through the bar. And that made him remember something. ‘There were two Russian guys in the bar,’ he said. ‘One with sandy hair, polo neck, leather jacket. One with black hair and a black moustache. Anyone starts firing, get out of the way and let me deal with it. Understood?’
‘I can handle myself in a combat situation,’ said the General.
Danny looked meaningfully at the remnants of dressing-gown cord that were still hanging from his wrists. ‘Let me deal with it,’ he repeated.
The General’s pale face reddened but he puffed out his chest anyway. ‘I have guys in the hotel,’ he said. ‘American guys. Good guys. Any more of them get hurt, you’re in the glasshouse for the rest of your goddamn days.’
‘Mate,’ said Danny, ‘you’ve got a fifty-fifty chance of getting out of here alive. My advice is to do what I fucking say.’ He gave his weapon the once over, checking that the safety lever was disengaged, and headed out of the room. ‘Let’s go,’ he said.
SIXTEEN
Danny held the Sig with two hands. His left supported its weight. His right kept it in position. As his body moved, the firearm moved with it. It was part of him.
At the entrance to the General’s suite, he stood with his back to the wall by the door frame. He listened. There was a residual ringing in his ears from the fire alarm. It got in the way of his thoughts and he had to concentrate hard to drown it out. Were there footsteps outside? Voices? He didn’t think so. Silently, swiftly, he stepped out into the corridor. Looked both ways, the Sig leading. There was nobody in sight. He checked back over his shoulder at Bethany and the General. For a man who minutes previously had been naked and humiliated on a bed, seconds away from having his throat slit, he looked alert. There was no hint of the relaxed womaniser from the bar. He was a little dishevelled, but sharp around the eyes. You didn’t get to his position in the military without a high level of operational awareness. Danny made a minute adjustment in his mind: he was not protecting an incompetent, but someone who could be relied on to manage a hostile situation. And as for Bethany? She had a steely aura. Danny knew what she was capable of. ‘Follow,’ he told them.
