The Skorpion Directive Read online

  “Yes. Look innocent.”

  Mandy put the glasses down, gave him an eyebrow.

  “Too late for that, dear boy.”

  She studied the little brown dot for a time.

  “Not trying very hard to avoid detection, are they?”

  Dalton, who didn’t like this development at all, was looking for some sort of cover anywhere up ahead just in case the chopper was hostile. “We just passed a little village back there . . .”

  “Hrushivka,” said Mandy, catching his tone. “But there was nothing there we could stick this truck in. Besides, the people around here don’t seem all that friendly. Not a smile as we went through. Nothing but frowny faces, like a Young Republicans float in a Gay Pride parade. Anyway, it’s too late for escape and evasion, I think.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s coming in for a closer look.”

  Dalton, craning his neck to look out the side window, saw the little brown dot getting bigger, turning into a stubby little ball with two fat attachments on the sides—the housings of its two piston engines. As he watched, the chopper tilted forward, its six rotors divided into two glittering disks, one above the other, sunlight reflecting off the machine’s glass snout.

  “A Kamov Two-Six,” he said in a low tone, recalling the machine’s capabilities. “Crew of two, can carry six passengers with the optional cargo box. Top speed around one-sixty, ceiling maxes out at nine thousand feet, range: four hundred and fifty klicks.”

  “Aren’t you the little fountain of utterly useless data. He’s coming in pretty fast. I’d suggest you do something clever.”

  Dalton, watching the chopper getting larger and larger, could see a white oval through the windshield, the face of the pilot, and another oval, a second man, beside him. The crackling mutter of the chopper’s piston engines was getting louder. At about five hundred feet out, the chopper banked right, less than fifty feet off the pine canopy, and began to track the Lancer, matching its speed. As the chopper showed it angular profile—a lot like a dragonfly—Dalton could see that there was no passenger pod.

  So, two people: a pilot and a spare.

  “It looks like someone is pointing a camera at us,” said Mandy. “Shall I wave?”

  “Are you sure it’s a camera?”

  Mandy lifted the binoculars, studied the craft.

  “Yes. No. Binoculars. What should we do?”

  “It’s their play,” said Dalton. “Maybe they’re just curious about the truck. And, yes, wave if you want.”

  Mandy, rolling the window down, gave them a gay flutter and a charming smile, and then rolled the glass back up. Nobody waved back. Dalton kept the truck steady, passing a sign:STARYI KRIM 15 K

  “If the pilot wants to do something snaky about us,” said Mandy, “he’s only got a few klicks left before we reach about five thousand witnesses.”

  “Yes,” said Dalton, checking the rearview mirror, seeing nothing but a curve of eroding blacktop lined with dense pine forest. Up ahead, there was more of the same. “What’s he doing?”

  “He’s . . . He’s banking again. Coming our way.”

  “Okay. Put away anything loose and check your pistol.”

  Mandy shoved anything that was hard-edged or pointy into the glove and side compartments, got her SIG out and made sure there was a round in the chamber, checked her mag as well, her movements calm and steady as they always were when they had to be. Dalton kept his eye on the chopper, which was now on a course to cross the highway about a half klick in front of them, running very low, just skimming a tree line. As he flashed past the opening of a small side road on his right, barely a rutted track, he saw something brown and bulky out of the corner of his eye.

  He checked his rearview mirror and saw a large mud-colored flatbed truck pull out of the lane, jolting into the road behind him, and then accelerating quickly.

  “Okay,” he said, pulling the Anaconda out of its case on the rear seat, “now it begins. We have a truck behind us.”

  Mandy looked back, her face registering the truck and going a little whiter. “Not a coincidence, is it?”

  “No. And look at the chopper.”

  The chopper had come to a hover just above the tree line at the edge of the highway. Painted a dull tan, it carried no registration numbers, no corporate or service markings of any kind, which was highly illegal even here in the Crimean.

  They watched as it rotated around to face them, sliding sideways and down, rocking as the rotors kicked up a cloud of leaves and dust. It lowered, touched the pavement, settled into its struts, and now sat dead in the middle of their road about three hundred yards away. They were on a narrow stretch of deserted highway, scrub forest or prairie grass on either side, stony hills all around, with a chopper sitting on the road ahead and, behind them, down to a slow crawl, the flatbed truck, its motor chugging roughly. Two men were visible behind the dusty windshield.

  “A neat little trap,” said Mandy. “Any suggestions?”

  “See the stand of forest up there on our left?”

  Mandy nodded.

  “I’m going to put us next to it. We’ll have some cover there. Okay? One thing, Mandy. If it comes down to it with these guys, save yourself a round, Mandy. Save a round.”

  She smiled at him, nodding, but said nothing, not a tremor showing, her expression calm, although she was even more pale than usual for an English rose. Dalton braced his arms on the wheel and accelerated, pushing the Lancer up through the gears, redlining the pedal, getting some distance between them and the truck to their rear, trying to get level with a small scrub forest about a hundred feet up the road. He watched as the chopper rocked on its struts, the two side doors popped open, and two men got out, both wearing rough farmhand clothing: tan bib overalls, heavy boots, dark shirts. Both men were big and hard-looking, and both were carrying AK-47s. One was an older man with a grizzled Mohawk. The bald one on the right was Smoke, his burn scars glistening in the light, his eyes two slits, his mouth a rippled, distorted leer.

  “Dear God. What a hideous troll. Is that—”

  “Yes,” said Dalton. “That’s him.”

  Smoke lifted the AK, aimed it at the Lancer, sighting low. Dalton hit the brakes and cranked the wheel to the left as the AK’s muzzle burst into a sparkle of blue-and-red fire. The grille of the Lancer took three heavy rounds, from headlight to headlight, shuddering from the impacts. A ricochet starred the windshield. Dalton fought the Lancer to a grinding stop up against the stand of pines, cracked the door, and said to Mandy, “Into the forest. Go in deep. Take a good position and go to ground. Cover up. Stay hidden. Hide your muzzle flash. Pick them off one by one. Go.”

  She was out of the Lancer and racing into the woods just as the flatbed truck, air brakes hissing, shuddered to a stop a hundred feet down the road. Dalton, his blood rising up, one image flooding his mind—Galan’s butchered corpse in the trunk of the Saab—stepped out into the middle of the highway. Smoke and Mohawk were coming in at a dead run—now perhaps a hundred yards away—a very long shot for his Colt. Smoke stopped and aimed his AK.

  Dalton, not expecting a hit, just hoping to rattle these guys enough to throw off their aim, fired three quick rounds, the Colt jumping in his hands. Amazingly, both men went to the ground. Smoke, his rifle clattering away, rolled to his left, got to his feet, grabbed his AK off the tarmac, and stumbled into the prairie grass on Dalton’s right.

  A hit, thought Dalton. A hit.

  Mohawk, still in the game, was up now in a firing crouch, his AK muzzle lighting up as Dalton watched. But his aim was too high, and heavy rounds hummed over Dalton’s head and bounced off the roof of the truck behind him, the rest cracking into the pines a long way down the road. Dalton heard a shrill cry from someone inside the truck. Taking his time, he aimed three more rounds, and Mohawk flinched backward, falling flat to the pavement. Dalton pulled an autoloader out of his pocket, reloaded, snapped the cylinder shut, and turned to deal with the men in the flatbed truck.


  He saw a brief flash, heard the solid crack of an AK, and flinched as a round hummed by his ear, smacking into a little pine tree by the side of the road and cutting it in two. Another wisp of muzzle smoke, more flashes, more thudding cracks.

  At least one of the 7.62mm rounds, a slug as big as a lipstick tube, hummed by inches from his cheek. A second one passed so close to his neck that he could feel the heat of it on his skin and the slug plucking at his hair. The shooter, who was too damned good, was firing from the flatbed behind the cab, steadying his barrel on the cab’s roof. Taking this guy out was a priority. Zeroing in on the patch of shadow in the middle of the truck’s rear window, Dalton fired twice, the pistol bucking in his hands. The windshield shattered, and the shadow behind it fell away.

  He heard a high-pitched shriek and saw a skinny figure tumble off the side of the flatbed, landing on the tarmac like a sack of meat. Another crack, another muzzle flash, this time from the side of the truck. Behind him, Dalton could hear the sound of a man running and turned to see how close he was. Still no sign of Smoke, but Mohawk was on his feet and coming in. With a good seventy feet to cover, his weapon at port arms as he lumbered down the road, he apparently was not confident enough about his shooting skills to take a shot at Dalton or was too worried about hitting the flatbed again. Dalton heard the man’s breath chuffing, his boots thumping on the pavement, something metallic jingling at his belt. He had a few seconds.

  Dalton came back to the flatbed truck, steadied his sights, and squeezed off three more rounds. They punched through the metal hood with an audible clang, paint chips and metal slivers flying up, with a distinct meaty impact as one of the rounds hit its target. A small man on the far side of the truck fender fell back and away, his rifle flying onto the rocks.

  Time to deal with Mohawk.

  Dalton spun sharply around on one heel and brought the Colt up just as Mohawk came skidding to a clumsy stop less than fifty feet away, freezing with his AK halfway up into a firing position.

  No sign of Smoke. Had Dalton killed him? As easily as that? Not bloody likely. Mohawk, a barrel-bodied packet of bone and gristle with a squashed nose and scarred skin all around his eyes—maybe a boxer?—squinted into the muzzle of Dalton’s Colt, the big revolver steady as a gravestone and aimed right at his forehead.

  This usually gives one pause, as it did Mohawk. He saw two of his men near the flatbed truck, one lying in the ditch and very still, the other lying in the road in a fetal position and holding his belly, his legs kicking, whimpering. Wisps of gun smoke hung in the chilly, pine-scented air.

  Mohawk looked around for his partner. Not a sign. He looked up. Nothing but Prussian blue. To either side of him, a wall of trees. Behind him, a chopper he did not know how to fly. And in front of him, a tall, rangy blond-haired man with a granite face and pale blue eyes holding a massive stainless-steel revolver.

  “Put the weapon down and live,” said Dalton in a low, carrying tone, icy calm, but very aware that he had only one round left in the Colt and that if the man had good eyes he’d know it too.

  Mohawk’s eyes flickered around the area as if he were hoping for Smoke to appear, for a shot out of the forest, to save him.

  Then he came back to Dalton.

  “You are Dalton?” he asked with a heavy Serbian accent.

  “Put the weapon down.”

  He shook his head.

  “No. I put weapon down, Vukov kill me.”

  “Is Vukov the man with the burned face?”

  “Yes. You are Krokodil. You are the man who burns him.”

  “Glad to hear it. Now, put your weapon down.”

  “I . . . can’t . . . Vukov, he don’t like cowards.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “My name?” he repeated and then stiffened, his expression hardening. “I am Branislav Petrasevic. I fight in Kosovo, in Srebrenica, in Pristina. Kill all my enemies. I am . . . Skorpioni!”

  “Vukov is the coward, Petrasevic. Not you. You stayed to fight. Like a soldier. Like a Skorpion. Good for you. But I will still kill you if you don’t put the gun down.”

  Dalton said nothing more, concentrating on the forward sight of the Anaconda, which was zeroed on the man’s forehead, thinking, Where the hell is Vukov? One AK shot from the tall grass, and I’m through. Where the hell is he? Wounded? Dead?

  In the taut stillness, Dalton heard no movement from the little wood where he had last seen the man, no stealthy flanking approach coming through the long grass. Just silence, other than the soft breeze hissing in the grasses and the chuffing sound of the man’s breathing, which was short and sharp, and getting shorter and sharper as his body reacted to the adrenaline racing through his body. Mohawk’s eyes were fixed on Dalton’s face, pale brown eyes with a gold fleck in them. His leathery skin was seamed, weather-beaten, scarred, and he had not shaved for a couple of days, the beard on his face showing ash gray against his sunken cheeks. Dalton could hear his mind working.

  Fight or surrender?

  Live or die?

  Something changed in the air between them. The man’s eyes widened, his knuckles whitened on the stock of his rifle, the muzzle began to move, and Dalton put a .44 Magnum round through the man’s forehead. The round blew the back of the man’s head apart, the crown of the skull spinning away like a saucer. What remained of Branislav Petrasevic went straight down, collapsing into itself, until the knees struck the ground. And then his body toppled forward, hitting the pavement face-first, no bounce. The jagged bowl of his exploded skull dumped blood and pink brains out in a lumpy arc across the tarmac.

  DALTON, reloading, ran back to the flatbed truck, found the man with the belly wound lying at the side of it. He was a very young, very skinny kid with a wet white face and wild blue eyes, tears streaming down his cheeks. He was lying in a lake of blood, his lips blue, his hands clutching his belly, purple ropes of intestine bulging through his bloody fingers. His breathing was shallow and rapid.

  He looked up as Dalton walked over. He opened his mouth, started to say something, Dalton had no idea what. Dalton leaned down, touched the muzzle to the kid’s temple. The kid jerked his head backward, said, “Jesus no, Jesus,” but Dalton put a round into his head anyway, shattering the kid’s skull like a pumpkin..

  Then he walked around the tailgate to the far side of the truck, found the other man sprawled in a ditch, his AK a few feet away. Another half-formed kid, barely in his teens.

  Dalton’s round had struck the boy in the throat, blowing it wide open. His head was almost completely severed from his neck, attached only by some stringy sinew and what was left of his spinal column. Dalton stared down at the ruins.

  What were these clowns thinking?

  And who was training them? Or failing to train them?

  Raise them up on stupid hate, prattle on about glory, about the motherland, but teach them fuck-all about fire control or small-unit tactics and then stuff them into the grinder. Such a waste.

  Dalton picked up the kid’s AK, checked the magazine: seventeen rounds left. He stuffed the Colt into his belt, hefted the AK into patrol position, moved through the long grass and up into the little wood of twisted trees where he had last seen Vukov.

  It was cool and shadowed inside the thicket, although sunlight dappled the rust-colored, needle-strewn ground, and beams stirred like golden straws in the rich green darkness. He moved as quietly as he could, which was very quietly indeed, slipping over the ground, stepping carefully across the deadfall and the broken branches of long-dead trees, breathing through his open mouth, listening with all of his mind and heart.

  He saw something flit through a pillar of sunlight a hundred feet away, got a glimpse of a squat, bulky figure dragging an AK, limping badly. Dalton had hit him, at least once, but he was still covering the ground, moving very fast.

  “Vukov!” he shouted.

  The running figure stopped abruptly, a dun-colored shadow barely visible through the trees and the prairie grass like a lion on the veld
t, and shouted back at him, “Kill all my boys with that fucking big gun? You pretty damned good, Slick. No matter. Next time coming. And the woman. I do her first, make you watch!”

  “Talk, Vukov. Gutless talk. Come and finish it.”

  “Fuck you, Slick. Come and get me.”

  And then he was moving again, nimble, fast, darting through the grass and scrub trees, going up a slope,

  Getting away.

  Dalton, his blood up, started after him, got no farther than three steps, and then he realized that he couldn’t leave Mandy alone. She would be waiting for him to come back or for Vukov to double around, find her, and kill her. Which was what would happen if he was stupid enough or angry enough to take the bait.

  Protect your base of fire, the first principle of combat. Mandy was good, but Vukov was probably better. And Vukov wasn’t the main point right now. The main point was reaching Kerch, finding Dobri Levka, trying to take this whole thing apart.

  As a consolation, Dalton fired off a three-round burst. He saw Vukov in the distance dodge, tumble down into the long grass, get back up on his feet in a second, his tan figure melting into a stand of poplars. Dalton sent another long burst into the trees. The muzzle blast slammed and boomed and echoed in the stillness. The cocking bolt locked open, and the weapon was empty, the sounds of the gunshots dying away into a rumble. Slender showers of bark dust came drifting down through the shafts of sunlight all around him, the gun smoke curling inside them too, the cool air full of the coal oil and carbon reek of burnt cordite.

  “Soon, Vukov,” he shouted into the silence, his voice echoing off the hills all around him. “Soon!”

  Dalton stood there for another minute, his heart rate slowing, his anger cooling, suddenly very tired, his unprotected ears ringing painfully from the gunfire, half deaf, in a muted, muffled world.