The Increment (14 page)

A hail of bullets chattered out of the gun. He was holding its tip up high, making sure the ammunition sped through the air at around five feet from the ground. At that height, it would sever the head from anyone unlucky enough to be in its path. A short river of flame was rising up from the windows where Ivan had tossed through the firebombs. Then he caught his first glimpse of the enemy. One man was trying to douse the flames, the other was trying to shoot from the window.

With Malenkov standing right behind him, Matt trained his gun on the man with the rifle.
Drop, you bastard, drop.

He was as strong as an ox, Matt judged. Despite the punishment his body was taking, he was trying to swivel around on his heels and direct a last, dying round of fire on his assailants. Matt went straight for the hands: he could finish him off later if he had to, but without any hands, he wasn't going to shoot back.

The gun dropped, as the bullets shredded through his hands. Then, an instant later, the man crumpled to his knees, blood pouring from the wounds stretched across his body. At his side, the second man, caught in crossfire from Malenkov's machine gun, had fallen on to his side, his hair catching alight on the flames still rising from the floor.

He looked up, terror filling his eyes, but his gaze moved beyond Matt to the doorway behind him. 'Orlena,' he muttered, struggling to speak through the pain. 'Orlena.'

Matt spun around. Orlena was standing behind him, the gun attached to her hip. 'He knows you?'

Orlena ignored him. '
Likuvannia,'
she shouted down at the dying guard,
'Likuvannia.'

The man looked up at her.
'Pishov, pishov,'
he shouted.

Orlena pulled her gun free, pointed it down, then fired twice. Two bullets struck the guard, one in the forehead, the other in the cheek. A muted scream struggled from his damaged throat, but within seconds his body was alight, and the life had drained out of him.

Matt walked across, briefly checking that both men were completely dead. They're only doing their job, just as I am. They didn't deserve to go down like this.
Later, in the still of the night, I will grieve for these men, as I grieve for all the others.

'Clear?' he barked towards Malenkov.

'Clear,' grunted the Ukrainian.

'How's it looking out there, Ivan?'

'Clear,' shouted Ivan through the window. 'I think we're OK.'

Fifty per cent casualties, thought Matt.
I wouldn't call that OK.

'Let's get these fires out,' said Orlena, walking into the room. 'I want all the data on these computers transported back to London.'

'We came here to destroy a factory,' snapped Matt. 'Not to play the IT department.'

'You came here to follow my instructions,' said Orlena icily.

Matt glanced across at her. One man was lying on the floor, blood seeping from multiple wounds, another was gently burning. Yet Orlena stepped over them as if they didn't exist. Her eyes moved through the room, looking only at the computers, focused on the final part of the mission.

Like a ready meal that hasn't had long enough in the microwave, thought Matt.
Hot on the surface, but freezing inside.

'How did he know who you were?' asked Matt looking across at Orlena.

She shrugged: a nonchalant toss of the shoulders that suggested the question did not interest her. 'We were here in a delegation some time ago trying to persuade them to stop counterfeiting our drugs,' she answered coldly. 'I guess I have a memorable face.'

Matt stepped closer to her. 'But what was he asking you about?' he persisted. 'What was the "word you used?
Likuvannia?
What the hell does that mean?'

'Nothing,' answered Orlena, moving across the room. 'He was begging for mercy, but it was no use. Everyone here has to die.' She paused, looking back towards Matt. 'A screwdriver? Do you have one?'

'Do I look like Bob the bloody Builder?'

'Never mind, a knife will do,' continued Orlena. 'Take out the casings on all these computers, and remove the hard drives. Get those, then we can leave.'

It was midnight fifty, Matt realised. 'We haven't got time,' he said angrily. 'The police could be here in ten minutes.'

Orlena paused, fixing her gaze on Ivan and Malenkov before turning to face Matt. 'There's always time to obey an order.'

Ivan had joined them in the room now. Matt could see the exhaustion in his face, but also the relief.

That was a closer-run thing than I could ever have imagined.

Matt worked fast and furiously. The cuts on his arms were starting to ache, and he could feel the soreness rippling down his back where he had bruised himself.

It took only two minutes to unpick the computers. There were eight of them, and Orlena, Matt and Ivan were working together. Matt was no expert, but he knew how to unscrew the casing, and the hard drive was easy to locate. A shiny square rectangle of metal, it was sited at the centre of the machine's innards. Don't worry how you take it out, Orlena had told him. The data stored on it can be still be retrieved once we get it back to head office.

What's on the hard drive that she needs so much? wondered Matt as he ripped the disk free.

The job finished, they ran back into the main compound. Ivan planted his remaining eight firebombs to blow the main admin building into the sky. The fire in the factory was still blazing, the flames licking up into the night sky, creating a warm crimson glow that spread out across the whole area. It was hot and the air was thick with the fumes from the fire. Matt scanned the brightly illuminated sky, searching for helicopters. Midnight fifty-three. If reinforcements were coming, they could be here any moment. They certainly weren't going to have any trouble finding the place: the flames would make it visible for miles.

It would burn for another two or three hours, Matt judged.
And by the morning it would be completely destroyed.

Malenkov had collected the bodies of Nikita and Andrei, and had laid them out on the hard mud, their heads turned towards the east. In the Russian Orthodox Church, he explained to Matt, everyone was always buried facing east: that was where the sun rose, so that represented light, whereas the west, where the sun set, represented the darkness.

It wasn't possible to bury these two men properly or to return their bodies to their families. But they had fought bravely, and died for pitifully little money.
We should do the best we can for them.

'How long is this going to take?' Matt asked anxiously, looking across at Malenkov.

'They gave us their lives,' answered Malenkov. 'We can spare five minutes to bury them.'

Matt was about to reply, but he swallowed his words. His watch had ticked past one o'clock. He looked up into the sky, but could see only the sparks and flames spitting up towards the stars.

Orlena, Matt and Ivan stood in a small semicircle, while Malenkov sprinkled some petrol over the bodies. Malenkov crossed himself and began to chant. The words were in Ukrainian, and meant nothing to Matt, but then at his side he could hear Orlena slowly whispering them in English as well. 'Be open, O earth, and receive the body that has been created out of you. That which was in the image of God, the Creator has received, and do you receive your body?'

Malenkov tossed a match downwards. A blast of burning petroleum hit Matt in the nostrils, as the flames started to crawl over the two corpses. Malenkov turned away and started walking back towards the forest.

'Josef was my son, you know,' he said, not looking back to the others. 'His mother will never forgive me.'

Matt hesitated. He wanted to say something, but he'd seen enough men die on the battlefield to know there was nothing you could say or do. He followed Malenkov back into the forest, taking the same path they had come in by. As he walked, he was scanning the night sky, his ears listening for the hum of choppers. Nothing. All he could hear was the sound of a light breeze rustling through the leaves of the trees, and the crunch of their feet against the moss, twigs and dirt that made up the floor of the forest. The Land Rover was parked twenty minutes hike away, hidden among the trees, and they should be able to cover the tracks of their escape route.

The sooner we get out, the better.

'Two hours sleep, then we get moving,' said Matt looking up at Malenkov and Ivan. 'It's a long drive. We need our strength.'

The farmhouse had been empty for years, and was surrounded by thick forest. If the police found the burning factory, Matt calculated, it should be days before the search brought them here, so they were safe for a while at least. Before dawn, they would start their drive back to the Ukrainian border.

He drained the glass of vodka Malenkov had poured for him. It was after three in the morning now, and the night was at its stillest. 'I'm sorry about Josef said Matt.

Malenkov nodded, his expression remaining sombre. 'He wasn't a soldier, I shouldn't have brought him,' said Malenkov. 'But we needed the money.'

'The families of the other men who died?' asked Matt.

'They'll be contacted in due course,' answered Malenkov. 'I'll get someone to speak to them.'

'And make sure they get paid.'

Matt walked down the corridor towards his bedroom. His kitbag was still in the corner of the room, and the mattress was lying on the floor. He unpeeled his T-shirt, chucking it to one side. A line of red blood ran along his left arm where he had cut himself, stretching for about eight inches, with a thin scab already starting to cover it.

He took a cup of water from the sink, dipped a tissue into the water, and began to press it against the cut, breaking open the scab. He winced as he did so. The water stung the blood, sending a bolt of pain jabbing up through his arm.

'Here, let me do that for you,' whispered Orlena, suddenly appearing at his side.

He looked round. She had a bottle of vodka in her hand, its cap already unscrewed.

'I already had a drink, thanks,' said Matt.

'Not for drinking.'

Orlena poured some of the vodka on to the tissue, and started to run it along the length of the wound. 'Neat vodka is just about pure alcohol,' she said. 'It makes a good disinfectant.'

Matt tried to relax the muscles in his arm. He could feel his skin starting to sting as the alcohol rubbed into the raw flesh. Orlena worked softly and surprisingly tenderly, dabbing at his skin with the tissue, careful not to make it any more painful than it had to be.

When it was done, she put the bottle down on the floor. Next, he could feel Orlena's soft hands caressing his chest. She took his fist, and pushed it inside her trousers.

'I'm cut, and I'm tired,' he said, looking into her eyes. 'And we just killed a dozen or more men.'

'I don't care,' she replied, pushing him down, and stretching her legs over his. 'Like I told you, we fuck the way I want, when I want to, or not at all.'

Matt lay in her arms, his passion spent and exhausted. He could feel her long legs curling around his and, although the mattress and the single blanket were rough and worn, her skin felt fresh, soft and new next to his. As the first glimmers of dawn started to break shards of light through the window, he held her closely to him, enjoying the smell of her breath, and the taste of her lips.

In her company, even the blood of the men who had died during the night was starting to fade from his memory.

'I know so little about you.'

Orlena shrugged her shoulders. 'I'm a woman,' she replied. 'I'm lying in your bed. What more do you need to know?'

Matt laughed, realising there was something girlish about his line of questioning. Still, she fascinates me.
I want to know more about her.
'Family?'

'Everyone's got one of those.'

'In the Ukraine?'

'No, in New York,' snapped Orlena, anger flashing up into her eyes. 'My dad's chairman of Goldman Sachs.' She rolled over on to her side.

'You must have
someone,'
persisted Matt, his fingers running down the delicate outline of her spine.

'Nobody.'

'Parents, brothers, sisters?'

Orlena shook her head, and although he could not see her face he sensed she was sad: it was written into the tensing of her shoulder blades, and the way her neck was sagging on to the pillow. 'My parents are dead. I have one brother. Roman.'

'Do you see much of him?'

Orlena turned round, lying flat on her back, her arms folded across her supple, white breasts. 'He fought in Afghanistan, for the Soviets,' she said. 'After he came back, he was, well, never quite the same.'

'Happens to a lot of guys,' said Matt. 'I still have nightmares myself, we all do. It doesn't matter what anyone says, men aren't designed to kill other men. It damages all of us.'