Chapter Twenty-Five

“Hello, Mr. Jenkins,” Hardesty said as Mike reached the top of the rolling ramp. “Larger crowd than normal?”

John Hardesty was a tall, slender and distinguished looking former RAF fighter pilot who had gotten out with the fixed intention of becoming a pilot for British Airways. The problem with that being that, like the RAF, BA had been having cutbacks for years. Unable to get the job of his dreams, he’d settled for flying rich bastards around in private jets.

One day he’d gotten a charter that looked to be the usual, flying a rich American bastard around Europe. However, it had turned out somewhat differently than he’d imagined. The first odd note was that the rich American had turned up with just one suitcase and a small backpack instead of the loads of business suits the pilot had expected. And the destinations had been… odd. Small towns in Russia, rather notoriously dangerous towns in Serbia. And instead of the usual “I’ve got a business meeting tomorrow morning, we’ll be taking off at noon,” the passenger had required that he and his copilot to be on-call twenty-four hours a day. And had usually turned up in the middle of the night, reaking of cordite, his clothes spotted with bloodstains. At one point he turned up with what was clearly a low-class Russian hooker and carted her around for the rest of the trip. Hardesty tastefully ignored the fact that she had recent bruises from a beating.

The passenger also turned out to be travelling under at least three false names, and clearances for entry to countries had been remarkably smooth. He might be a hitman, but if so he was a hitman for a government, which made him almost respectable.

The various flights had culminated in Paris where the passenger had advised him to get to an airport well away from the City of Light and choose a hotel room that didn’t look in that direction. The news the next day that a nuclear weapon had been found in Paris, and been disarmed, came as no real surprise.

Since then he had carted “Mike Jenkins,” AKA Mike Duncan, AKA John Stewart, AKA whoknowswhat around to various spots in Europe, the United States and Southeast Asia. Since that first wild charter there hadn’t been a hint of gunpowder. Until tonight. Tonight he had the feeling things were going to get wild and wooly. Again.

“A bit,” Mike said. “And documentation is following. We’ve also got a bit of luggage.”

“Plenty of room in the compartments,” Hardesty said, leaning down to glance under the fuselage as the Keldara began unloading. Some of the bags looked suspiciously long. “I take it none of it’s going to explode?”

“We’re leaving the Semtek, if that’s what you mean,” Mike replied, standing by the females as the girls walked by.

“Nice joke,” Hardesty said, smiling. Then he looked at Mike’s face. “You were joking, right?”

“Customs is going to be handled on the far end,” Mike replied. “But we’ll be leaving a good bit of the material on the bird. So figure on a five-day layover in Vegas.”

“You weren’t joking,” the pilot said, shaking his head as one of the Keldara men went by with his arm in a sling.

“We’ve gotten drivers to take all the vans to the embassy,” Mike replied. “But while I’m willing to leave my Semtek, I’m not willing to leave all the gear. Or the ammo,” he added as the Keldara men started filing up the stairs with various rather heavy bags that might or might not contain such things as guns and ammunition.

“There are times that I really wish you’d picked another charter company as your flyers of choice.” Hardesty sighed. “On the other hand, the young ladies are quite charming, are they not?”

“About half of them are intel specialists,” Mike said. “The others are hookers that have been freed from Albanian gangs. One of which is, apparently, hot on our tail. As soon as the last of our party turns up, you might want to be ready to take off. Fast.”

“Really, really wish…”

“If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.”


* * *

“This is most irregular,” the second assistant to the ambassador from Georgia to Croatia moaned as he looked at the pile of blank passports. “Most irregular.”

“You want irregular?” Chief Adams sighed. “There’s an Albanian hit team on my tail. There’s a plane waiting to fly to the U.S. at the airport. And I’ve got to get from here to there, with these passports, and without getting killed. So just do me a favor and stamp the appropriate spots so I can get the hell out of here before we have a firefight in the embassy, okay?”

“You are joking, yes?” the official moaned.

“I am joking, no,” Adams said, picking up the official stamp. “So you want to stamp them or not? Your call. But I’m not leaving without them.”


* * *

“Mike, got the documents,” Adams said, leaning over to look out the window of the van. He was currently parked on Georgian territory, but the minute he pulled out he was going to be in Indian Territory. With no backup.

“Hold one,” Mike said. “Any sign of shooters?”

“Not so far,” Adams replied.

“Well, we’ll just have to go for the trailer.”


* * *

“IFOR duty desk, Sergeant Simmons speaking, how may I help you, sir or ma’am?”

Simmons was a reservist from Tennessee with the Fifth Regiment. All in all he’d much rather be back in Murfreesboro watching NASCAR, but duty in Bosnia these days was pretty tame. And the girls were plentiful and downright fine. Cheap too. There was worse duty. He’d already done one tour in the sandbox and that classifed as “much worse.”

“Sergeant,” a man said in a hoarse whisper. “Thank God I finally got to an American. I’ve got a real problem.”

“Sir, IFOR is not available to help distressed citizens…” the sergeant replied, sighing. Every time somebody lost a passport or got mugged or rolled or something, they fucking called IFOR. He flipped open his Rolodex looking for the number for the local police.

“It’s not that,” the man whispered. “I’m running from a group of Albanian terrorists. I’m an Albanian American, okay? My name’s Hamed Dejti. I grew up in San Diego, okay? I was down in Kosovo, I was visiting relatives, okay? I was in a café and I heard some of the men talking about bombing one of the IFOR camps. They had a car and the explosives but they were arguing about who was going to drive it, okay? I guess I left too fast, they must have suspected I heard them. I mean, they were talking about the stupid American that didn’t understand them, okay? I’ve been running from them ever since. I tried to get the border guards to help me…”

“Sir, are you sure about your information?” Simmons said, hitting the alert button and rolling out the duty guard platoon. This wasn’t a mugging. The voice had a definite American accent and the caller was clearly scared. He just wished he had a tracer circuit.

“They said they were going to strike one of the American camps,” the man said, more definitely. “They didn’t say which one. But that’s you guys, right?”

“Where are you right now, sir?”

“I’m at a payphone on Gajdekova Street,” the man said. “The only ones I know about are in a white Lada, parked a half a block from the Georgian embassy. I’m right across the street. I think they want to kill me, but there are too many guards around. I’ll wait here until somebody gets to me. I can’t even get to the American embassy, they cut me off! Please…”

“Sir, I’m scrambling the duty platoon right now,” the sergeant said, looking up as the duty officer walked in, scratching at his stomach under his uniform. “We’re on it.”


* * *

“Adams.”

“Cavalry is on the way. As soon as our friends are occupado, boogie. We’re only waiting on you.”


* * *

“They’re in the Georgian embassy,” Ctibor said, pointing with his chin.

Yarov leaned down to mask his face and looked towards the gates of the embassy. It was an old mansion with an iron spike fence around the courtyard and a baroque exterior. The guards didn’t seem to be paying any attention to the white Lada, but he could see the van parked by the side entrance.

“Well, we’re in place, but that’s only one of them,” Yarov replied. “We need them all.”

“Why did they go to the embassy?” Ctibor mused.

“Because they knew we couldn’t get at them, there,” Yarov said. “The rest might have already rendezvoused and this is a throw-away group. We’ll wait one night and if they don’t move…”

He looked up and shook his head as a group of Humvees, with the one in the lead sporting the blue light of an MP vehicle, raced down the road at high speed. The side of the Humvees were painted with the American flag and a large yellow blazon he didn’t recognize.

“Fucking IFOR,” Ctibor growled. “Fucking Americans. Why can’t they just go back to their own damned…”

He paused as the vehicles screeched to a stop and began disgorging troops in full body armor.

Yarov started to back away from the Lada and stopped as an M-16 was thrust in his face.

“Up against the wall, dirt bag!” the American private from the Fifth Cavalry screamed, grabbing his arm and turning him around. “Hands above your head.”

He twisted his head sideways and growled as the white van sedately drove out of the main entrance to the embassy. As it passed the street scene of American trooops rounding up “dangerous terrorists,” whoever was driving tooted their horn in farewell.

Fucking Americans.

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