the village elder. The roof was intact even though part of one wall was now missing. The old man was sitting on a crimson rug in the corner, his henna-red beard specked with dust. His eyes angry, he showed no fear. He waited until Lieutenant Gorodetski had entered the room behind Bull before speaking words of venom.
‘He says it is a trap; that we have all been tricked,’ Gorodetski translated. The old man jabbed at them with a bony finger. Gorodetski continued. ‘He says we are infidels, not men of our word, not men of honour.’
‘Enough.’ Bull stepped forward and crouched. ‘We are men of honour. We did not break our agreement.’ Drawing his revolver, Bull shot the elder in the face.
Shocked, Gorodetski looked down at his captain. ‘Why?’
Pashinski stared at the young officer. ‘He was Mujahedeen; that is all you need know.’
An explosion behind, then another. Bull turned as Gorodetski backed out of the house. On the ridge above, the fire-support team were under attack. Gathering up his Brigada, Bull charged back towards Lesukov’s team. Reaching the ridge, wild rounds whistled past them. Lesukov’s men had been taken by surprise; a group of fighters numbering more than twenty had flanked them from the west. Lesukov fired controlled bursts from his Kalashnikov at the Afghan hordes. Of the team of eight, only he and two others were left.
Zukauskas grabbed a mortar and turned it around to face the oncoming threat; one-handed, he dropped a mortar into the tube and fired. Unsighted, the bomb flew over the Mujahedeen and landed harmlessly, save for an explosion. Securing the tube on the ground, he sighted it while Gorodetski dropped in a new shell. This time the explosion landed just to the left of the advancing fighters. Some stopped, others carried on.
Bull joined Lesukov. There was a grin on Lesukov’s face. ‘We make our own luck!’
‘No. We make it unlucky for them!’
A sound from below brought Bull very much back to the present. He raised the kite sight and saw three trucks moving slowly along the rural road. Shifting his weight slightly he looked to his left and could make out the hunched figures of the militia’s SOCOL Eagle unit further down the incline in front of him. His lips formed a serpent-like smile as he depressed the switch on his covert transmitter twice. Seconds later, his ready signal was acknowledged by three bursts of static in his earpiece.
On the valley floor the lead truck slowed and stopped. The driver stepped out and made a show of kicking the tyre in disgust. The two remaining trucks concertinaed and also stopped. Soon all three drivers were inspecting the ‘guilty tyre’. In the green haze of the night scope there was movement again as a larger but solitary truck appeared on the horizon, heading directly towards the convoy from the opposite direction. It joined them and the driver greeted his fellow truckers warmly and offered his help and advice.
As Bull had hoped, the stationary convoy made too good a target to pass up. The armed members of the SOCOL appeared on the road below and advanced towards the drivers, weapons up. The second SOCOL group on the hill now stood and started down the incline on a ninety-degree approach to the target. Bull pressed his switch again. SOCOL’s ‘plan’ was going to plan. Here, twenty kilometres inside the Ukrainian border, they would intercept the latest arms shipment and punch a hole in this smuggling route. That was, until…
Bull’s sign was met this time by two short, static bursts. From above and to the right, his men opened fire. A tracer flew towards the descending SOCOL ‘cut off’ group. Four fell without even knowing where their executioners were. The remaining two flung themselves down on the barren hillside and scrambled for the smallest piece of cover. On the road, the intercept team had just enough time to train their weapons. The lieutenant, whose reactions had been surprisingly rapid, managed to get off a single, low-velocity round from his pistol, which struck Driver Two square in his concealed Kevlar breastplate. Staggering back, he had fallen as Drivers One and Three let rip with armour-piercing rounds from short-barrelled AKs, all but cutting the officer in half. Further shots sought out the two attackers on the hill and the engagement was over within a minute. Like the Poznan anti-terrorist police a decade before, the Ukrainian SOCOL had met the Soviet Red Army Spetsnaz and lost. Bull stood, walked down the hill and joined his Brigada. The first part of his business deal had just gone through. He exchanged congratulatory glances with his men and retrieved a satellite phone from a padded pocket.
Tiraspol, Transdniester
Ivan Lesukov sat in the sauna and sweated. ‘You have done well, my friend. And the other half of the bargain? You are a real man of your word, Bull.’ He shut his flip phone and placed it on the wooden plank next to him.
‘They have done it?’ Arkadi Cheban was anxious to know.
Lesukov beamed. ‘Yes, they have. The shipments will no longer be hampered by those Ukrainian “heroes”.’
‘That is great news, Uncle.’ Cheban used the term as a sign of respect. Lesukov was actually the uncle of his wife. He had married into the business, leaving his days of being an interpreter behind.
Lesukov wiped his brow and looked at the younger man. He was ready. ‘We are expanding on all fronts, Arkadi, and I have a job for you.’ He noticed Arkadi’s narrow chest swell with pride. ‘I want you to organise our deliveries in London. Who knows, you may even be able to import chairs.’ He tapped his nose.
Arkadi was ecstatic; he had been dreaming of permanently leaving this joke of a country for as long as he could remember. When he’d been ordered back from England by his uncle, he’d thought perhaps he’d done something wrong and even debated whether to return or not. He had, after all, only been there for three months. On the contrary, however, ‘Uncle’ had been impressed. ‘Thank you, Uncle.’
‘I know how much you will miss Yulia but trust me… she will be able to join you soon.’
In fact, during his time in London, Arkadi hadn’t missed his wife at all. He was quite taken with the Polish girl who worked in the local coffee shop. ‘I do hope so, Uncle; it is lonely without her.’
Lesukov liked this. Having no children of his own, his sister’s daughter was very dear to him and he would have killed anyone who didn’t treat her with respect.
Arkadi changed the subject. ‘Why is Pashinski called “The Bull”?’
Lesukov held up his finger. ‘When we were young conscripts together, about your age, we had a very stupid sergeant who asked Tauras his name. When he replied, the man asked him if he was a bull – like the star chart. I do not know why this offended him but Tauras hit him. You see, the sergeant did not like Lithuanians. Tauras was beaten and left outside in the snow, tied to a post, for three days. A month later the sergeant disappeared on a training exercise. For my part, I think he is more like a venomous snake.’
Fontanka, Odessa Oblast, Ukraine
The best rooms were, of course, on the thirtieth floor. Here the penthouses had floor-to-ceiling glass walls that gave fantastic views of the landscaped gardens and private beach. The top five floors were VIP class with private clubrooms. Every room in the hotel had both a sea and inland view as the structure curved like a giant wave. The hotel was indeed fantastic, or would be, Varchenko reminded himself, once it was built. Yes. The architect had done a great job of transferring his vision from idea to plans to scale model. Now, it was the foreigners he needed to
