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  Exit wound

  ( Nick Stone - 12 )

  Andy Mcnab

  Three tons of Saddam Hussein's gold in an unguarded warehouse in Dubai…For two of Nick Stone's closest ex-SAS comrades, it was to have been the perfect, victimless crime. But when they're double-crossed and the robbery goes devastatingly wrong, only Stone can identify his friends' killer and track him down…As one harrowing piece of the complex and sinister jigsaw slots into another, Stone's quest for vengeance becomes a journey to the heart of a chilling conspiracy, to which he and the beautiful Russian investigative journalist with whom he has become ensnared unwittingly hold the key. Ticking like a time-bomb, brimming with terror and threat, Andy McNab's latest Nick Stone adventure is a high-voltage story of corruption, cover-up and blistering suspense – the master thriller writer at his electrifying, unputdownable best.

  Andy McNab

  Exit wound

  (Nick Stone – 12)

  PART ONE

  1

  November 1988

  The twin props of the Dornier Do 28 Skyservant went into hyper-scream as we lifted from Tempelhof’s rain-lashed runway and climbed steeply through the West Berlin gloom. There was normally room for a dozen or so bodies in these things, but not in this one. The seats had been stripped out and the four of us had to sprawl on the cold steel floor.

  The aircraft pitched and yawed like a dinghy in a gale. Gripping a rib of the bare fuselage, I pulled myself up to a window. Either Dex was trying to keep us below the cloud cover or failing to get above it. The West glowed and twinkled like a giant Christmas tree down there. A neon Mercedes sign seemed to throb on every other rooftop. The nightclub district was virtually a firework display. If we got back from this job in one piece, perhaps we’d go there and let off a few of our own.

  The Luftwaffe had Do 28s coming out of their ears, and most of their flights out of Tempelhof, the Americans’ main military airfield here, were milk runs. They took off from the island of West Berlin several times a day and followed one of the three air corridors across the Soviet-occupied East to reach West Germany proper. Nobody gave them a first glance, let alone a second, and that was the way Dexter Khattri and his seven-month-old ponytail liked it. His aircraft was going to be making a slight detour.

  I felt like I was being spirited into occupied France to help out the Resistance. Going by the creaks and rattles and the rush of cold air into the cabin from all the leaks in the airframe, SOE could have used this very plane – the noise was so loud I thought the door had slammed open. I’d noticed rain leaking round the jamb after it was closed, so it was obviously loose. Maybe it had finally blown off.

  I folded another turn into the bottom of my beanie to give the back of my head some padding. Then I pulled up the zip of my black Puffa jacket the final centimetre and braced my back and feet against the floor, knees up, hands in pockets. If they’d made matching Puffa trousers, I’d have opted for three pairs.

  The Dornier lurched again and my head rolled on the protective woolly band. Dex was swinging us left and right. This time I didn’t want to look out of the window in case I saw why.

  It could be that we were weaving between the tower blocks. I pictured the local kids’ faces pressed against their bedroom windows, wondering what the fuck was going on. Red Ken said that was what had happened last time. Dex had stuck a torch under his chin, Hallowe’en style, and given them a wave. They were probably still having nightmares.

  The Berlin Wall was intact, but only just. It still boasted mines, dogs, electric fences, machine-guns on fixed arcs, everything the Communist regime needed to stop its citizens leaking West, but nowadays even the guards wanted to jump ship. Everybody knew it would be over very soon, one way or another. Only a year ago, Ronnie Reagan had stood at the Brandenburg Gate and delivered his ‘If you seek peace, Mr Gorbachev, open this gate! Tear down this wall!’ speech. But for now they were still the bad guys – and Dex and the three of us under Red Ken’s command were about to cross into their airspace.

  My headphones crackled as Dex quipped: ‘Not far now, chaps – home for tea and wads before first light, what?’

  The aircraft plunged to rooftop height. He gave a little chuckle. ‘You can cross radar off your worry list – I think we bought that last week.’ The chuckle became a laugh. ‘If not, I hope you’re wearing sensible shoes. It’s a long walk home.’

  As if the bone jokes weren’t bad enough, Dex treated us to the first few lines of his old school song. His cut-glass accent provided the icing on the whole SOE cake. ‘“Jo-lly boat-ing weather, /And a hay har-vest breeze, /Blade on the fea-ther,/ Shade off the trees…”’

  He went up a couple of dozen decibels. ‘“Swing, swing to-ge-ther, /With your bodies be-tween your knees…”’

  The Wall might still be intact, but Dexter Khattri wasn’t. The guy was as mad as a box of frogs. No wonder his girlfriends came and went as quickly as his thought patterns. Dex spoke like Prince Charles on speed, which sounded strange coming from an Indian. But then again, my arse had been stung by more vindaloos than his ever had. The closest he’d ever got to the land of his forefathers was driving past a Bollywood video shop on Southall Broadway.

  Dex’s past-the-shoulder ponytail was his latest attempt at seeing how far he could push the envelope with the RAF head shed. This time he’d decided he was a Sikh. No wonder he was the only pilot I knew who’d remained a flight lieutenant for fourteen years.

  Since we’d got back from helping out the mujahideen, Dex had been criss-crossing the Iron Curtain in Cessnas, Dorniers, helicopters, whatever it took. They said he’d flown more people out of the East than Aeroflot. He loved his life just the way it was, without responsibility. The only thing that pissed him off about the military was that he had a death wish and it hadn’t obliged. He was always too lucky. I hoped it stayed that way tonight.

  We were crossing the Iron Curtain to the Communist prison camp that called itself the German Democratic Republic to make contact with a KGB agent. ‘Vladislav’ was going to give us the guidance system of a new generation of Soviet ballistic missiles. We were going to give him a big bag of cash.

  2

  We swooped between two tower blocks. I knew Dex wouldn’t be able to resist whipping out his torch again. He probably wasn’t going to get another chance.

  With the Cold War in its death throes, the Warsaw Pact boys were holding the mother of all closing-down sales. Every KGB agent – like the one we were about to meet – had turned into Del Boy Trotsky. They were auctioning off apartment blocks they didn’t own in Moscow and St Petersburg. Generals were using entire infantry battalions to shift heavy plant for sale at their Western borders. Some army conscripts were even being rented out as slave labour by the high command. They still had a quarter of a million troops fighting in Afghanistan, but no matter what the Soviet PR machine claimed, they were getting their arses kicked big-time over there.

  Red Ken, Tenny and I had spent most of ’86 running around the mountains with the men in beards. The Regiment dropped every bridge that came within reach so the Russian armoured convoys couldn’t move around the place. Then we built IEDs to blow them to pieces if they did. Dex was busy doing supply runs for the muj when he wasn’t ferrying us.

  Even in those days, the level of Soviet corruption had been outrageous. Dex brought back shed-loads of brand-new Russian weapons and equipment that had been sold by their high command. Most of it ended up being used against their own twenty-year-old conscripts. These kids were dropping by the hundred every day.

  Now the entire Soviet bloc was in meltdown, the East Germans were going for it big-time. They were flogging as many military secrets as they could get their hands on. Even the Stasi, the state secret police, were doing a roaring trade in
secret documents. Anything to bring in a few dollars before the whole system went to rat shit. The West encouraged it. Once the Wall fell, a new world order would have to be fought over – and if we didn’t grab as much technology and intelligence aswe could while the going was good, there were plenty of other buyers in the queue. We had to know what kit was about to flood the market so we could build better stuff to defend against it.

  Red Ken and Tenny had been seconded to Brixmis, the British Commanders-in-Chief Mission to the Soviet forces in Germany. They’d needed another body for this particular job and had given Hereford a call to see if I was available. These two were tighter with each other than with me, but we’d always liked working together.

  Brixmis was set up after the Second World War to foster good working relations between the occupying forces in the British and Soviet sectors. The French and Americans reached their own agreements with the Russians. For some reason the Brits were allowed as many liaison staff in the Soviet zone as the other two missions combined. Maybe they liked the PG Tips.

  Red Ken had served twenty-two years in Para Reg and the SAS, and his face told the whole story – although his roll-up habit must have contributed something to those deep crevasses. He’d spent the last three years driving about in his matt-green Opel, taking pictures of tanks and helping defectors across the wire, but was getting out of the Regiment after this tour. He claimed he had no plans beyond sitting full-time on the terraces at Barnsley FC, but I knew he was talking bollocks.

  Tenny was also from D Squadron. He was taking over from Red Ken, but for how long, nobody knew: when the Wall crumbled, so would Brixmis. He was about thirty, very smart and hard. You’d have to be, growing up with a hairdo that looked like a rusty Brillo pad. ‘Tennyson’ wasn’t a name you normally heard shouted across an inner-city playground, but his drop-dead gorgeous fiancee seemed to like it, and I guess that was all that mattered.

  Tenny had always been a star. After university and a spell in the OTC, he decided he wanted to hang out with squaddie lowlife rather than do what he should have done – become a doctor or lawyer or something that lined his pocket. Tenny had been going places. He had golden balls. We all knew he was destined for better things. For me, being in the Regiment was the best I was ever going to get. For him, it was just another stepping-stone to global domination.

  ‘“Jol-ly boat-ing weather, /And a hay har-vest breeze, /Blade on the fea-ther, /Shade-”’

  ‘Shut the fuck up!’ Dex was doing Red Ken’s head in.

  Dex threw the aircraft into a tight right-hander. I had to throw out an arm to stop myself sliding across the cabin.

  ‘Now, now, Red – manners. You guys should like it. The music was written by a Rifle Brigade chap at the North-West Frontier. I think his name was-’

  Red Ken had had enough. ‘Shut the fuck up, crap hat!’ To Para Reg, that meant anyone who didn’t wear a red beret.

  These two had always been like a couple of fishwives. They bickered 24/7, but couldn’t do without each other to bicker with.

  Dex’s tone suddenly changed. ‘Border crossed.’

  Down below it looked like someone had taken an axe to the Christmas-tree cable. Even the navigation lights had been doused.

  ‘Over the sterile zone.’

  A Bronx growl filled our headphones. ‘I can see that. Just tell me when we’re going to goddam land.’

  Tenny kept his voice low and controlled before Red Ken had a chance to tell our American friend where he could shove the Special Relationship. ‘It’s OK, Spag. We’ll get you there, don’t worry. We can’t do anything right now apart from lie here and let Dex get on with it.’

  I’d met Conrad Spicciati three days earlier and known straight away I didn’t like him. It wasn’t just because he was small and so overweight he looked like Humpty Dumpty – he didn’t know how to behave with us. For a low-grade CIA agent he had a Pentagon-sized swagger. We had to take the piss. Dex started calling him Spaghetti. Ten seconds later we’d shortened it to Spag.

  It got him so worked up his porn-star moustache was in a permanent twitch. He kept stroking it with his thumb and forefinger, possibly to calm it down. I wondered if he’d grown it especially for the job. But I didn’t give it much thought. As far as I was concerned, we’d get this shit done and never see him again.

  He sat with his arms locked around a black nylon sports bag in the dull red glow of the aircraft interior, gripping it like he thought we were going to mug him. I probably would have done if I’d thought I could have got away with it. The bag contained Vladislav’s twenty thousand US dollars. It didn’t sound like a lot for a bit of top-secret kit, but it would have been a life-changing sum to me.

  Tenny needn’t have worried. Dex ignored him. ‘“Bang, bang, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang…”’

  Red Ken’s and Tenny’s shoulders heaved in unison.

  Spag bellowed into his headset that nobody sang on his goddam watch.

  Biggles segued straight into ‘Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines’.

  Odd smudges of very East German light appeared – dull and yellow, not the fairground stuff their Western mates went for a few thousand metres away. We called them nein-watt bulbs.

  Red Ken cut in: ‘OK, that’s it, enough. Let’s switch on.’

  3

  The Dornier dropped the final couple of hundred feet. My head bounced off the steel as we hit the ground and bumped along the field.

  When I sat up I could see a line of small fires through the windows. Benghazi burners – normally small pots of petrol and sand, but probably mud here. Everywhere east of the Wall was ankle-deep in the stuff. The burners would have been laid out in an L, Second-World-War SOE-style. The base of the L was the threshold; Dex needed to land as close to it as he could to ensure he had enough grass to rattle to a stop. The long stroke gave him wind direction.

  Spag was already up on his knees, headphones cast aside as if he had to jump and run under fire. He struggled to keep his balance at the same time as he hugged the bag to his chest.

  Red Ken waved him down. ‘The crap-hat has been watching too many war films.’

  Tenny convulsed again with laughter.

  Spag didn’t like it. He stayed on his knees, ready to leap out and take on all-comers.

  Red Ken wasn’t finished. ‘Who does he think he is? He’s a pencil-neck CIA desk jockey, not the fucking Terminator…’

  Tenny rested a hand on Red Ken’s shoulder. ‘Give him a break. This is his first time. And he’s American.’

  After Spag’s thirty-odd years as a desk jockey, he wouldn’t be auditioning for the job of Arnie’s stunt double any time soon. He looked more like the new cartoon character I’d been watching on the American forces’ network back in Berlin, Homer Simpson.

  The Dornier slowed. Dex taxied to the threshold, swung the nose round so he was facing into the wind again, and closed down the props. ‘Just like the old days, chaps – the four of us together in the middle of nowhere. At least we don’t have to start spouting Pashto.’

  Spag headed straight for the exit and scrabbled to get out.

  Red Ken caught his arm. ‘No rush, mate. If we’ve got a drama waiting for us out there, we’ll find out soon enough. We need to take everything slow and calm.’ He swung the door open.

  My nostrils were hammered by the stench of shit.

  Tenny saw my face screw up in the dull red light. ‘Human fertilizer. Nothing gets wasted round here.’

  Red Ken set off towards a thin torch beam that suddenly pierced the darkness.

  Vladislav’s contact appeared out of the gloom. His fresh boot-marks met Red Ken’s in the frosty dew. They’d done a lot of business during his tour, but this was their biggest deal yet. They hugged like old mates and jabbered away to each other in German while Tenny checked our comms with Dex.

  I didn’t know the contact’s name and didn’t need to. Tenny and Red Ken were here to look after Spag, and my job was to look after them. I tightened my grip on the t
wo-foot steel Maglite. There were rules to this game, and one of them was that Brixmis went unarmed. If you were caught with a gun, you got shot, simple as that.

  Apart from my torch, the only kit we had with us was the radio in Tenny’s day-sack and whatever Red Ken had in his. A couple of sharp rectangular shapes jutted against the thin nylon. I didn’t know what they were and I didn’t ask. If I’d needed to know he would have told me.

  Our biggest weapon was secrecy. No one knew where we were, apart from those who absolutely had to. The KGB and the Stasi had no reason to be out here, sliding around in the shit. And if they were waiting to round us up with dogs and AKs, we were sterile.

  Dex stayed in the cockpit. He tended to stick out in this part of the world. He’d be pissed off that he’d had to close down the engines. It was good for security, but bad for us all if he couldn’t get them restarted. That was how he’d got caught last time. He’d ended up being traded for a couple of newspapermen caught spying for the East.

  The RAF rule was that he should have taken off again and come back in when Tenny called for a pickup. But Dex didn’t like doing that. He never had. He said it made him feel like he was running away.

  4

  Apart from the gentle whispers between Red Ken and the contact, it was quiet.

  Red Ken’s German was far better than mine, but that wasn’t saying much. I was still at eighteen-year-old-squaddie level. ‘Pommes frites… Bier… Taxi…’ was pretty much my limit, with the occasional ‘danke’ and ‘bitte’ thrown in. If anything else I wanted wasn’t on display – so I could point at it and shout – I had to go hungry.

  Spag stormed up to them, both hands still gripping the bag. ‘Shouldn’t we get moving?’