Close Quarters

ELEVEN

Callahan’s briefing update just before I left for Donetsk had told me that Travis had been moved out of a hotel in the city centre to one at the airport. He had no information on why, but the general guesswork was that it was for his safety while the group holding him figured out what to do with him. His new location had a history of being used as a transit hub for officials and military officers coming in and out of the region, but was now thought to have few if any genuine paying guests.

I arrived back at the airport and located the building. It was situated a few minutes from the main visitor and transit areas, along a side road linked to the main approach road. It easily fitted the picture of being government-run, as it lacked the glitz and glitter of most commercial hotels and wore a slightly tired air. It hadn’t been painted anytime recently, and a large chain looped across the entrance to the car park made it clear that the place was not open for business. Most of the rooms were in darkness, so I figured Callahan’s information had been correct.

The roads in the area were busy, with a heavy presence of uniforms and military vehicles. But if there was any coordination of movement going on, it didn’t look obvious. Every man was armed and looked alert and it didn’t take much imagination to see that they were a hair trigger away from going on the offensive if they saw something they didn’t like.

I left the Toyota in a nearby cargo lot and walked back to the hotel where Travis was being held. I had my bag in my hand as cover; if I got stopped and searched, I was looking for somewhere to put my head down before heading into the city.

I saw the first of the guards as I walked past the entrance. He was standing beneath a large wooden panel bearing a schematic of the hotel’s facilities and topped by a line of weather-worn international flags. He was dressed in a combat jacket and jeans and had an AK-74 assault rifle looped over one shoulder. He looked bored and cold, and I kept my head down and avoided eye contact. Even in the reflected light from the street lamps I was close enough to see that the rifle looked clean and well cared-for. I spotted another man fifty yards further on, similarly dressed and tucked into a line of bushes by the side of the building. He was holding a Bison-2 submachine gun and, like his colleague, although not dressed in full uniform, had the air of a more professional soldier than some of the others I’d seen.

I circled the block and counted four other guards. They were in a variety of pseudo combat uniforms, but all were holding clean weapons and looked ready for war. A UAZ Russian military jeep was in the rear car park, a clear signal to anyone who cared to look that this situation was far from ordinary and casual visitors would not be welcome.

I left them to it. There was nothing I could do now until I got word to Callahan and the ball was set in motion for Travis to take a walk. Once that happened I wasn’t going to get much sleep. I retrieved the Toyota and drove away from the airport, threading my way carefully through a choke-point of military vehicles and troops, all waiting for something to break out.

I was mentally composing my call to Langley when I saw a line of lights ahead and several vehicles surrounded by armed men.

Roadblock.

It was too late to turn back and there were no side turnings I could use. On each side of this stretch of blacktop was open land dotted with clumps of darkness which I took to be trees. Beyond that — way beyond it — I could see the flicker of lights from streets and buildings. If all else failed I could abandon the car and hope none of the troops felt like chasing after me in the dark. But I had no way of telling if the space in between would give me a clear run or I’d find my way blocked by a river, canal or rail line.

I decided I’d have to bluff it out. I knew the submachine gun was safe unless the car was given a serious going-over, so I slowed down and joined the short queue of other vehicles.

If the soldiers manning the roadblock had any point to the exercise, they weren’t making it obvious. In the lights from the vehicles, the ones at the side of the road looked sullen and bored, smoking cigarettes and flicking the butts into the air, while the ones doing the checking were taking their sweet time, scanning papers and asking lots of questions.

One man in particular seemed to be enjoying playing the role of a heavy, waving an AK in the air and walking around the cars and staring intimidatingly at the occupants. He looked unsteady on his feet and it was easy to see he’d been drinking.

I inched forward until it was my turn, keeping one eye on the drunk and hoping the safety on his rifle was in the ‘on’ position. None of these guys looked like Ukrainian regulars, and I wondered which faction they were from. All I knew for sure was, they had to be pro-Russian and pro-breakaway.

‘Papers,’ said the drunk, stepping forward and planting the end of his gun barrel on the edge of the car window. He had a tag with the name ‘Rambo’ stitched above his breast pocket, and close up I could smell a combination of alcohol, body odour and stale fried food. He wore a combat jacket like his colleagues, but the T-shirt underneath had a non-military logo across the front.

I kept my cool and handed over my papers.

He thumbed through them although I don’t think he took much in until he noticed where I was from.

‘You’re a German? Christ, I hate Germans. What the fuck are you doing here in our city, Heinrich? You’re a long way from home, you know that?’ He lifted the gun barrel and placed the tip against my cheekbone and grinned, showing a line of bad teeth. ‘This is a war zone, Heinrich. Although you Germans are used to war zones, aren’t you?’ He blinked suddenly as a thought occurred to him. ‘Hey — are you a spy sent to see what’s going on here — is that it, huh?’ He prodded my cheek with the gun barrel. ‘A filthy German spy come to shoot us in the back?’

Heinrich wasn’t the name on the papers, so I figured it was what he called all Germans.

‘I’m a maintenance worker,’ I told him, and looked past him for his colleagues, but they were all standing in a group a few yards away, letting him get on with it. A glance in the wing mirror showed me that I was the only vehicle left. For a moment I debated hitting reverse and getting out of here, but there was enough fire-power right here to stop me before I’d gone fifty yards.

‘Perhaps I should shoot you now and be done with it,’ Rambo muttered. ‘I mean, save a lot of trouble later, wouldn’t it? And who the fuck would miss you, eh? You got a wife and kids, Heinrich? Or do you play the other side of the fence?’

I didn’t say anything. It was obvious what he was doing: he was ramping himself up right in front of me, just looking for an excuse to use his gun. It was nothing personal in spite of the ‘Heinrich’ digs; I’d simply happened along at the wrong moment and had become the focus of whatever was bugging him. I’d seen the same kind of behaviour at roadblocks in trouble spots around the world, and it was always the same: a hyped-up man with a gun and an attitude looking for someone to push around. It gets a lot of people killed for no good reason. All it would take was a wrong word and he’d lose it completely.

‘Get out.’

‘Sorry?’

‘I said, get out.’ He yanked the door open and put the rifle back in my face. ‘Get out right now or I’ll blow your miserable German head off.’

I did as he said, moving very carefully. The last thing I wanted was to give him an excuse to start blazing away with the AK. As I stood up, I was close enough to him to have taken his rifle away and shot him; but his colleagues were too close and there were too many of them.

‘Pick them up,’ he said, and threw my papers on the ground. ‘Fucking littering — that’s an offence in our country.’

I bent down to do as he said, and risked a call to his colleagues. ‘Hey — you want to help me, here? I haven’t done anything wrong — I’m just here looking for wo—’

‘Did I say you could talk?’ Rambo shouted, and kneed me in the ribs. ‘Keep your mouth shut, you hear me? Now, empty your car.’

‘What do you want him to do that for?’ one of the other men called to him. ‘Come on, let’s go eat. Let the poor bastard go.’

But Rambo was beyond listening. His breathing rate had increased and in the reflected light from the car I could see he was sweating profusely. Whatever he’d been drinking had finally tipped him over the edge. He waved the others away. ‘Piss off you lot. I haven’t finished talking to this pig-sticker. I’ll catch you up when I’ve dealt with him.’

I watched as my last hope of intervention shuffled away and climbed into a small truck, and drove off with a few backwards shouts to their colleague. If they had any idea what he was about to do, it didn’t seem to worry them as much as getting some food inside them.

He watched them go, then reached into his combat jacket and took out a bottle. ‘Hey — tell you what, since we’re such good friends, how about a drink? Well, I’ll drink and you stand and watch. That’s fair, isn’t it? We’re just getting to be good friends, aren’t we, you liverwurst-eating scum?’ He shook the bottle to see how much was left, adding, ‘After that we’ll see what you’ve got hidden in your car, shall we?’

I looked around. We were almost in darkness, other than the lights from inside the car, and as far as I could see we were not overlooked. But Rambo had developed a drunk’s heightened sense of caution and was staying beyond my reach, the rifle pointed at my chest.

He took the lid off his bottle and tilted it up for a long drink. I waited for him to finish, wondering what I could do to get him thinking about something he could gain from me rather than simply shooting me. Whatever it was, it had to be something he’d want badly enough.

‘It’s in the back,’ I said.

‘What?’ He blinked and wiped his mouth on his sleeve, spilling some of the booze. ‘What is?’

‘I have a box in the back. It’s where I keep my stuff.’

‘What kind of stuff?’

‘A couple of bottles of vodka and some cash. Let me go and you can have it all.’

He looked at me and shook his head. ‘Are you trying to trick me? You think I’m stupid, is that it? Why didn’t you tell me this before?’

‘Because I didn’t think you’d want to share it with your mates.’ I waved down the road after them. ‘I mean, they’ve gone off and left you. What kind of friends are they?’

He looked into the darkness and considered that for a moment, rocking slightly on his heels. ‘Hey — good point. Cheap bastards, the lot of them.’ Then he pointed to the back of the car. ‘Right. Get it. Get the money and the vodka. But don’t try anything, you understand?’

I stepped round to the back holding my hands out to the side and opened the rear door. I had no idea what was in the back, only that I had to draw him in closer than he was now standing. The interior light came on, showing me a spare tyre and a square of filthy plastic. The rest of the space was as empty as Rambo’s brain. Damn. Where’s a handy tyre iron when you need one?

‘It’s here — look.’ I lifted the plastic sheet. ‘Under here.’

He stepped closer, breathing alcohol over me and dropping the tip of the rifle barrel so he could lean in and peer down at the floor.

I flicked the plastic sheet in his face. To a drunk, it was enough to confuse him for a split second. Then I reached up and grabbed the front of his jacket and pulled him past me as hard as I could. His head met the rim of the Toyota’s roof with a sharp bang and he grunted, but it didn’t seem to have much of an effect. He didn’t even drop the bottle. So I did it again, this time following it up with a hard punch to his belly and a kick to the side of his knee.

He yelled in agony as the bones gave way, and fell sideways, the bottle skidding out of his hand. He tried to bring the gun round, so I tore it off him and threw it into the bushes at the side of the road. Gunshots right now would carry too far, and there was too much risk of his colleagues coming back to investigate.

I picked up the bottle and found it was still half full. So I tugged Rambo cussing and swearing to the verge and lay him down, then stuck the bottle into his mouth and made him swallow. He didn’t like it at first, but after a few seconds his instincts took over and he gurgled away like a baby as the spirit poured down his throat.

By the time I stepped away from him, he was almost unconscious.

I got back in the car and drove away. With a bit of luck his friends would find him and figure he’d overdone the drink after letting me go.