The Increment (10 page)

Matt put down the binoculars.
The place is heavily guarded.

'That's a ditch, isn't it?' said Ivan, pointing to the perimeter of the fence.

Matt nodded. 'Standard defensive procedure. A deep ditch and a high fence is the hardest combination of obstacles to get past. You get trapped in the ditch, then you have to scale the fence. Gives the guy inside a lot of time to pick off the attackers one by one. People have been building military encampments like that since time began.'

Ivan looked ahead. There was just a quarter of a moon struggling to break through the low-hanging clouds, and he was struggling to adjust his eyes to the murky light. 'I thought it was a factory. Not a military base. . . Maybe they've got something to hide.'

'We'll worry about that when we get inside,' said Matt. He looked towards Malenkov. 'Is it possible to get a better look at the back?'

The Ukrainian led the way. There was a clearing of about forty yards at the front of the compound – enough space, Matt noticed, for the guards to get a good clean shot at anybody who came rushing out of the forest. At the perimeter, there was a short stretch of scrub and bush, then the trees started to grow thickly. Within another twenty yards, you were into thick forest, the trees growing close together in a thick mass of vegetation. The four of them started crawling through the undergrowth, Malenkov leading the way.

That's the weakness, decided Matt.
They are surrounded by covered, not open, ground.

He paused. They'd crawled towards the back of the compound now. The searchlights were brushing against the edge of the forest, the occasional stray shaft of light breaking through the leaves. In the distance, he could hear some animals moving through the woods: deer, perhaps, or some kind of wild boar. Nothing dangerous. He looked up ahead. At this point, the distance between the wood and the fence narrowed to no more than ten yards. It looked as if they hadn't cut the grass for a few weeks, and the weeds and bushes were starting to grow tall and strong. There was additional cover here if you wanted to rush the compound from behind.

'How many men do you think are inside?' Matt whispered to Malenkov.

'Can't say from here. Could be a dozen, could be more,' he replied. 'We'll stay here a while and see when they change the shift.'

Matt turned round to look at the others. 'Right,' he said. 'After that, get some rest. We can draw up our plan once we know.'

It was no more than a shack. A one-storey building with a flat roof, it was another fifteen-mile drive from the factory, this time to the east of Khatyn. They turned down a side road from the main highway, then turned right on to a dirt track that led through some cornfields. Probably a farmhouse, thought Matt as he glanced across at the building: there was enough space for one family, and a few animals, but it had long since been abandoned.

Malenkov had arranged the accommodation, and, as Matt had expected, he was a man who travelled budget class. The door creaked as he pushed it aside. The scent of dried-out rotting wood hit Matt's nostrils, and as he took his first breath he could feel the dust filtering into his lungs.

There was no electricity. Malenkov strode across the floor using his torch, lighting a kerosene lamp, hanging it from a hook in the centre of the ceiling.

'Home, sweet home,' said Ivan, glancing around the main room.

'It'll do,' said Matt gruffly.

Malenkov walked across to the cooking area: an empty fire, with a pot hanging above it, and a single gas ring attached to a canister by a short plastic tube. From the cupboard, he took out four stained china mugs, and from his pocket a bottle of Ukrainian Zhitomirska vodka. He pulled the top off the distinctive red-and-black bottle, decorated with a picture of a Cossack horseman. 'A drink,' he said, handing a cup first to Orlena, then to Matt and Ivan. 'This will get the damp out of our bones.'

Matt took the cup, closed his eyes briefly, then slung the pale, clean liquid into the back of his throat. It tasted hot and sticky and, as the alcohol hit his bloodstream, he could feel his muscles starting to unwind. It was as hot here in Belarus as it had been back in London and Spain: it was in the thirties all through the day, and even at night the temperature didn't seem to drop below twenty-two or twenty-three degrees. The air was thick with humidity, and Matt could feel the sweat seeping through on to his clothes after a night of crawling through open woodland.

'To the mission,' said Malenkov, raising his cracked cup. 'Whatever the hell it is.'

Matt, held his own cup up. 'And to getting home again.'

Malenkov poured a fresh hit of vodka into Matt's cup. 'Now we rest,' he said. 'There are some bedrooms down the corridor. Not luxurious, but they will do. In the morning we start planning our assault.'

'Fine,' said Ivan. 'The sooner we start, the sooner we finish.'

Malenkov grinned, revealing a set of perfect white teeth. 'Soldiers,' he said. 'It makes no difference which country we are from or whether we are fighting for a government or a corporation. We put our lives on the line, and we are never happy about it. We moan and complain, but we finish the job, or die trying. Isn't that right?'

'I can drink to that,' said Matt.

He threw the rest of the vodka down his throat, then followed Orlena as she stepped down the corridor. It was already past two a.m., and they needed to sleep: tomorrow could be a long and dangerous day. They needed all the rest they could get.

'Four rooms to sleep in,' said Orlena, pointing to the two different sides of the building. 'Ivan, Sergei, you take those two. Matt, you're on the other side.'

He walked towards the room. There was no lamp, but enough moonlight was seeping through the open window for him to make out the contours of the room. The bed was no more than a mattress on the floor, supported by what looked like wooden planks. He sniffed. The room had a dusty feel to it, and in the winter it was probably damp, but right now it seemed dry and clean.

He unfolded the sleeping bag that was perched on the bottom of the bed, pulled off his clothes, and shuffled inside the bag. There was no pillow, so he took his towel from his kitbag and put that under his head. As he started to rest, he could feel a wave of exhaustion starting to roll through him.

Suddenly he sat up. Something was moving. He opened his eyes, his forearm reaching forward. Orlena pressed a finger against his lips. 'Don't speak,' she whispered. 'You'll wake the others.'

She was still wearing the tight, low-slung blue jeans she had been wearing all day. Her finger moved down from his lips, tickling through the hairs on his chest. He could feel her breath, hot and fevered, on his skin. Reaching out, Matt slid his arms around her waist, pulling her body closer to his. He kissed her lips, tasting her lipstick, and the vodka still fresh on her tongue.

Whether he was more surprised by her arrival in his bed, or his own eagerness to take her, Matt couldn't tell. Moving his hands down the length of her body, he started to unbuckle her jeans, unpeeling the trouser legs. She giggled as the buckle scratched against her stomach, then pushed him down on his back, kneading his shoulders and his chest. He could feel his skin tensing as her fingers massaged the nerve endings.

Matt reached up, starting to unclip the back of her bra, and lift her T-shirt free from her shoulders.

'No,' said Orlena. 'We fuck the way I want to, or not at all.'

It was smooth and swift. Orlena steered him expertly towards her own pleasure. Sweat was dripping down the back of her spine, and Matt could feel himself perspiring as they both hit a rough climax. The pleasure, he reflected as she started to subside, was all the greater for being so completely unexpected.

Only when they had finished, did she finally take off her T-shirt and bra, freeing a pair of subtle, delicate breasts. Naked, she was a vision of sculpted loveliness. Some girls look better with their clothes off, others worse, Matt reflected. Some used their clothes and make-up to flatter bodies that were flabby and weak. Others used their clothes to conceal the perfection that lay underneath.

No question which category Orlena comes into.

'I thought you didn't want to sleep with me,' said Orlena, nuzzling her face into his chest as they lay together on the flimsy mattress.

Matt smiled. 'I lied.'

'What else have you lied about?'

'Nothing.' Matt rubbed his tongue across her breasts. 'What have
you
lied about?'

Orlena rolled over. 'Wait and see.'

TEN

When he woke up in the morning, she was already gone. Matt's final memory before he went to sleep was of her resting in his arm, her lips pressed against his chest. As soon as he awoke, he reached out for her, but there was nothing there.

She's not the kind of girl who hangs around to make you a nice cup of tea and a boiled egg in the morning.

Matt walked through to the main room. It was light already, the sky fiercely blue, and the sun streaming through the open doorways. A pot of coffee was steaming on the gas ring, and Ivan and Malenkov had clearly been up a while. A chessboard was spread out between them, and Ivan was pondering his next move, a look of intense concentration on his face.

Matt poured some coffee, swilling it down the back of his throat, then refilling his cup. It was the same mug that had been filled with vodka the night before, and traces of the alcohol mixed with the caffeine to bring him sharply awake.

'Where's Orlena?' he asked as he sat down.

'Gone to get some breakfast,' said Malenkov.

'Maybe she's more domesticated than she looks,' said Ivan.

'Women working like that,' said Malenkov. 'It would never have happened in the old days, I tell you. Women knew their place.'

'The sisterhood never really got its act together in the old Soviet Republic, did it?' said Ivan, grinning.

Malenkov snorted and moved his castle four places forward on the chessboard. 'Your move,' he said, looking back up at Ivan.

Orlena stepped back through the door. She had changed into a black skirt, and a pale grey blouse. She glanced at Matt, smiled knowingly for the briefest fraction of a second, then looked away. In her arms, she was carrying two loaves of thick, black bread, a block of soft cheese and some pickled cucumbers. 'Breakfast,' she said brightly. 'We eat. Then we work.'

Matt tore himself a hunk of the black bread. It was chewy, with a taste of rye and traces of the beer that was used to help bake it. The cheese was ripe, and even the pickled cucumbers didn't taste as bad as he'd expected. Washed down with some more coffee, the food was building up his strength again.

'So how are we going to take out the factory?' asked Orlena.

Matt took out a large sheet of paper and a felt pen, drawing out a rough map of the compound. 'Do we know yet how many men are defending it?' he asked, looking towards Malenkov.

'A dozen,' said the Ukrainian. 'I counted them last night.'

'We need to know what their shifts are. How many are on guard duty at different times of the night. Which of them are vigilant, and which of them are just sitting around picking their noses. All that,' said Ivan.

Malenkov nodded.

'And we need to know how long we have to escape,' said Matt. 'How close are the nearest police and army units? Do they have choppers? How quickly can they get to the factory once the alarm goes off? We don't want to be standing there when the local police turn up.' He glanced at Malenkov. 'About three men should be enough, plus the three of us. First, Ivan. We need some loud bangs, enough to distract everyone, and also to cause plenty of havoc and destruction. Then we'll need some more to blow the whole thing to hell at the end. Think you can manage that?'

Ivan grinned. 'Bombs I know about.'

'Malenkov, you can get your men to us by three this afternoon?'

The Ukrainian smiled. 'They'll be here,' he said. 'Three boys, all ex-army. They'll be good men, don't worry. Brave and hungry, which is the way a soldier should be.'

Matt jabbed his finger down on the map. 'OK, here's what we do. There's a manhole cover outside the compound, and another one just inside. I reckon there's some kind of drainage tunnel taking waste from the factory down to the river, which according to our maps is two miles to the west. Tonight, after dark, we get down into that tunnel and make sure we can get through it. Then we'll leave a guard overnight, just to make sure it hasn't been compromised. Ivan makes us a set of bombs. We sneak two men inside, and place the devices around the main factory. That blows the place up to the sky. The rest of us can move in, and finish off whoever is left, and secure the main administrative building. Once we've finished everyone off inside the building, then we can take that down as well.'

'How about casualties?' asked Ivan. 'Are we bothered about killing these guys?'

Matt paused. As usual, Ivan got straight to the point: that issue had been troubling him as well. 'The factory should be empty at night bar the guards. When it goes off, they can all run away into the woods if they want to. If they stay and fight, they'll have to take their chances. Besides, they look like trained soldiers.'

He looked up towards Malenkov. 'What kind of weapons can you get us?' he asked. 'AK-47s? There must be plenty of those around this part of the world.'

'There are,' replied Malenkov. 'But I can get hold of some of the newer AN-49s.'

'I've heard of them, but I've never tried one.'

'Nice piece of machinery. It was adopted by the Russian Army as the standard-issue assault rifle in 1994, although they never had enough money to get rid of all their old AKs.

'What's the difference with the AK-47?' asked Ivan.

'A much faster rate of fire,' said Malenkov. 'And much greater accuracy. The recoil has been completely redesigned, so the gun hits back after the bullet has left the chamber. That allows for a far greater hit rate. Don't worry, you'll like it. It's a fine gun.'

'What about the sights?' asked Matt. 'We may be picking targets off from distance.'

'It's got a proper rear-mounted peep sight. Not the old notch and post you had on the AK-47. So long as the man holding it knows how to shoot, the gun won't let him down.'

'I like the sound of it,' said Matt. 'We'll need one for each man, and at least twenty magazines of ammunition per man. Plus we'll need at least one back-up gun each. We're going to use American tactics on this job. Ridiculous and cowardly firepower to overwhelm the opposition. The last thing we want is to take casualties ourselves.' He paused, taking another hunk of the black bread and chewing it quickly. 'Everyone happy?'

Malenkov and Ivan both nodded. Matt looked up towards Orlena. 'Happy?'

'So long as the factory gets destroyed,' she replied. 'That's all that matters.'

'You have two new messages,' intoned the Orange answering-machine voice after a long and tedious wait. 'Press . . .'

Matt hit the button, too impatient to listen to the list of options. The Imarsat satellite phones connected perfectly to Matt's mobile, allowing him to pick up his messages, and make calls. Out here, there was no land line, and no mobile connection. But the satellite phone meant you could stay in touch with the world as easily as if you were in London.

Probably easier.

'Matt, it's Bob here, Bob Crowden,' started a familiar Geordie voice. 'About what we were talking about the other day. I did hear something. Guy down in Swindon, called Barry Legg. Passed through my unit. Lovely fellow. Apparently he disappeared a few days ago. Then he was found dead yesterday. Murdered. Maybe nothing in it. Just a bit odd, that's all. I thought you might be interested.'

Matt pressed three to delete the message. A soldier gets killed down in Swindon? He shrugged to himself. Happens all the time. Could have been muggers. Could have owed some money to the wrong people. Could have been some random psycho who had decided to start killing former soldiers.

Guys get their number called all the time. It doesn't usually mean anything.

He pressed for the next message. 'Matt, it's me.' He recognised the voice immediately. 'I just wanted to see if you were all right.' She paused. 'And I guess I wanted to see if you'd found anything.'

Matt hit the button for redialling the last caller. The phone rang three times before it was answered. Before she even spoke, he could hear the heavy roar of traffic in the background. 'Where are you?' he asked.

'Waiting for the bus,' she answered. 'Fulham Palace Road. You OK?'

Matt couldn't help himself nodding into the phone, even though he knew she couldn't see him. 'OK, yes. I heard something.'

There was a pause on the line, and he could hear the honking of a lorry. 'Tell me,' she said eventually.

'A former soldier down in Swindon, called Barry Legg. He died a few days ago, murdered apparently.'

'Could that have anything to do with the men going crazy?'

'I don't know,' answered Matt. 'That's all I've heard. Maybe it's connected, maybe it isn't.' He paused. 'Look, I'll be back in a couple of days, let's speak then.'

Matt snapped the phone shut. It was almost noon, and the sun was beating down fiercely. The morning breeze had dropped, and the few acres of wheat and barley growing around the empty farmhouse were completely still.

Nikita, Josef and Andrei had arrived twenty minutes earlier, delivered in the back of Malenkov's Land Rover. Nikita was twenty-five, Andrei twenty-nine, but Josef looked younger, maybe nineteen or twenty. All three of them had dark hair, and gentle Slavic looks, but with dark brown eyes and a slope of the shoulders that suggested they could decide for themselves which orders they wanted to obey. He knew they were being well paid. Orlena was giving them a thousand American dollars each, a fortune by local standards. And for that kind of money the job would be rough and dirty.

That's as it should be. A soldier is always entitled to know what sort of risk he's taking. It's his life after all.

'The older two look OK,' said Matt. 'Not Josef, he's too young. We need men, not boys.'

Malenkov glared back at him. 'Josef's OK,' he said. 'He stays.'

'No, someone else.'

Malenkov shook his head, and from the look on his face, Matt could tell he wasn't going to budge. 'He stays,' he said firmly. 'Or else we all go.'

Matt looked up as they completed the second circuit of the field. They stopped by a cattle trough, flooding their faces with the dirty water. He tossed a water canister in their direction. Josef was the slowest, and might be carrying a couple of pounds too many on his stomach, and Andrei might not have kept his muscles as trim as he could, but none of them had flagged during the physical test, and none of them showed any sign of giving up.

They were fit, and they needed the work. What more could you ask of any mercenary?

'OK, we go with these three,' said Matt, looking across to Malenkov. 'Let's run through the plan, then get some kip. We've a long night ahead of us.'

The three men sat in a semicircle, Malenkov translating, while Matt and Ivan ran through the plan. They listened closely, watching as Matt pointed to the map, explaining how they were going to get in, and how they were going to blow the factory.

It was straightforward enough. They all claimed to have been in the Russian Army, and the older two had fought in Chechnya.
By the standards of that war, this shouldn't be much more than punch-up in the playground.

'OK,' said Matt when he'd finished. 'Let's get some kip. Then when it gets dark we'll see how good we are at squeezing through tunnels.'

The smell was brutal: a stale, fetid mixture of human excrement, rotten food, and the heavy suffocating odour of industrial chemicals. Matt could feel his lungs choking on the air, the fumes crawling into every wrinkle in his clothes.

It's going to take a hundred hot showers to get this stink off my skin.

They had slipped down through the manhole cover they had spotted the night before. The tunnel, as Matt had expected, led due west from the compound towards the river: environmentalists had a chance to clear up Belarus yet, thought Matt with a grin. The tunnel was taking the waste from both the compound and the factory. It measured four feet across, built in a half circle. It had originally been built from concrete, but was now in a bad state of disrepair. Flakes of stone were crumbling from its walls, and thick piles of silt and waste had built up along the sides, making it virtually impassable.

We're going to have to hack our way through, realised Matt as soon as they got inside.

The work was hard and slow, the earth tougher than Matt had expected. It was now past one in the morning, and they had already been digging for two back-breaking hours.

Matt paused for breath, pulling back his shovel. The tunnel was at least ten feet beneath the surface. As the man with the most experience of digging tunnels, he'd taken the lead. He placed a tiny hand-held torch on the ground, positioning it so its beam shone upwards. With a pick, he hacked into the silt blocking the tunnel, letting it crumble and tumble to the floor. Then he kicked it back with his feet, letting Andrei scoop the earth up into a bucket, and pass it back along the line.

Some water started to wash through the tunnel. It ran in a tiny river around his boots, lapping up and drenching his socks. Matt forced himself not to think about what might be in it.