The Perfect Instinct Page 10

  Chapter 24

  Uh oh.

  Manfred Mann's Earth Band.

  That song. The one song. The pounding keyboards started playing followed by that ever-familiar repetitive opening chorus.

  Seven minutes. He'd been here before. No, not here beside the shimmering moonlit waters of the Adriatic in quietly beautiful Trieste.

  He'd been here, in this position, in this situation. Seven minutes and eight seconds for the extended version.

  Preacher can't see into the future. But like any dealer in death and general mayhem, he can sense when holy hell is about to break loose. And that is about the only time this song, among his all-time favorites, drops the vinyl in his cranial jukebox.

  He peered left and saw why. Five men moved rapidly out of an alleyway just under a hundred yards from his location. The dim light that fell on them shown on dark clothing, masks and assault rifles. These men weren't here for an exchange of smuggled goods. They were here to kill. They split into two groups and moved into the dark.

  Preacher could see it in a flash. That was all he needed to understand this small squad's mission. Best guess, these guys were soldiers. They had the look of war in their movement.

  Great.

  He recognized in the next flash what he missed. The marina was not the exchange site. This was a ruse. All to lure others into a kill zone.

  Run. Move. He stepped out from the alcove and took off, burst into a full sprint. He raised the Sig and fired five shots into the air before turning a corner to a street leading away from the marina, away from the bloodbath about to run. Behind him, as expected, gunfire erupted. Dozens, hundreds of shots were fired.

  He pressed redial on the phone as he ran. Elena picked up in half a ring.

  "Set up. Hit squad just arrived on scene. Get out-..."

  But unfortunately, the reply he heard from the other end was a door being smashed off its hinges, a barrage of gunshots and falling and yelling and dying. Then quiet.

  He shook his head as he raced ahead to the end of the tight ancient street. He turned right at an intersection. He then went left, then right again down an alley until he came to the stashed BMW. He hopped in, keyed the ignition and revved the engine, peeling out as he pulled away and drove up the hill.

  He dialed a memorized number on the cell phone and put it to his ear. Manfred Mann was into the second chorus.

  "Go." She said.

  "Everything falling to chaos. I think I know why I'm here."

  "Everything? Explain."

  Preacher slammed on the breaks, dropped the phone in his lap, ripped around a corner and blasted the vehicle up a short hill. He picked the phone back up. "You know. Shooting, killing, all that. Everything."

  "Project?"

  "Sorry. Spoke to project minutes ago, but then a kill squad showed up. Target didn't make it."

  "Position?" No emotion in Marta's reply.

  "Moving, up then east. Toward the port."

  "Chaos?"

  "Shooting gallery at the marina. Bad stuff."

  "Marina? Twelve?"

  "That's my guess. This mysterious shipment everyone is vying for is coming in. But,"

  "Yes?" Marta asked from across the miles.

  Preacher sped around another corner looking at the map of Trieste in his head. The port was just down the road. That meant he would need to go left, go around to the other side. Four and a half minutes left in the song.

  "But it was never coming into the marina. That was all facade. Misdirection. And, of course, you knew that."

  "What? Explain."

  "Me being here. Project was always noise. I'm here for that shipment. Papa doing his usual. You figured that out already, correct?"

  No response.

  That would be a yes. Marta saw the signs. Seibel working his grandmaster puppetry.

  "Sometimes it takes me a little while to get it." Preacher drove along a road up above Trieste's busy and sprawling seaport. "Katarina was a plant. Papa put a mole in Elena's operations years ago. Just so happened that she became Elena's lover."

  "You're using real names now?"

  "Screw it. This thing is blown. Whole thing is happening, going down tonight." He came to Nuova Sopraelevata, the highway wrapping around the Adriatic's busiest port. "I'm on it. I've got a pretty good idea what's happening here."

  "Slow down. You were there for the project. Elena. That's all. You established contact and now she is gone. It's over. Come home now."

  "I promised you no more than 48 hours here. I'll keep that. Promise." The last word he said in Russian. Obeshchayu.

  "But-"

  He severed the line and dialed another number.

  It was picked up on the third ring.

  "Not a good time."

  "Yah, got that. Your boat is probably floating swiss cheese about now. But I'm guessing you expected that, planned it at least."

  "How do you mean?" Captain Rodrigo asked.

  "I'll cut right to the bone Captain. Do you know who I am?"

  Delay at the other end. That would be a yes.

  "So if you know that, you know that I do one thing."

  "And that is?"

  "Your charade almost worked. You shook almost everyone off your trail and led them to the marina. But I just have to tell you,"

  "Yes."

  "You are going to be dead within minutes." Preacher accelerated into a turn, wheels screeching. "Sorry captain."

  "And you are going to kill me?"

  "Me, no. The guys you are meeting with in the next few minutes are not what they seem. Nothing like it."

  "How so?"

  Crap. Rodrigo was with them right now. Probably looking at them just feet away.

  "I'm wrong. You're with them now. Listen. You were good. You got this far, this long. You did well for years. But this is what I do. I was wrong; I'm sorry. You don't have minutes. These men you are looking at right now, are there three of them?"

  "Yes."

  Preacher switched to Spanish. "The product is right there, with you."

  "Yes." Rodrigo replied in Spanish. Si.

  "You're at the port?"

  "Yes."

  "No you're not. Doesn't sound like a port around you. Too quiet even for this time of night. Your exact location. Quickly."

  "SP14, small inlet past the tanks."

  "Right near Muggia?" Preacher could see it in his mind's eye as he navigated the road before him. Damn, he was at least eight minutes away. He was headed to the wrong place.

  "Right now Rodrigo I need to stop this. People will die if this shipment gets out. Lots of people. Give the phone to their leader. Don't let him tell you no. Hand it to him. You're dead anyway captain."

  Rodrigo pulled the phone away from his ear and looked down for an instant. He then took five steps forward and extended the phone toward Bojan. He had never met him in person, but could tell he was the leader of this group. Rodrigo kept his right hand raised as he handed the phone to Bojan in his left.

  The Bosnian Serb looked at Rodrigo for a few moments and then accepted the phone. The other armed men kept their assault rifles trained on Rodrigo.

  "Yes." He said into the cell phone in English with a thick accent.

  "What language do you want?" Preacher asked in heavily accented English. "Russian, German, French? I don't speak Serb very well."

  "English is fine." Bojan replied.

  "Good. I am approximately three minutes from your position. This man you are looking at is not the one you want."

  "And why is that?"

  "Because he doesn't know how to kill you and the other two men with you in less than second. He doesn't see that he was never going to leave your presence. Wait for me. Let me get there in a couple of minutes and I'll kill you nice and fast and put you out of your misery. I can end this suicide mission you are on before others get hurt."

  "You make threats. Empty threats. You sound like CIA slime. You and your kind end up as just that, the slime on the bottom of my boots." Bojan
turned back to his men.

  "You and your two friends can turn around, walk away right now. Go back to Bosnia. You sound like you are from the hills, the mountains. Not from Sarajevo. Go back home. Leave the shipment right there. You can walk away and stay alive. You take the product, you die."

  "Goodbye." Bojan pressed the talk button the phone to end the conversation. He spoke to his men, "All loaded up?"

  He received nods.

  "Good." The ethnic Serb turned back to Rodrigo with a Glock in his right hand retrieved from his belt and proceeded to confirm Preacher's prophecy by putting three bullets through the CIA agent's tan forehead. A fine mist of brain matter and blood blew out the back of the man's head and settled down on the dead CIA agent boat captain and the surrounding gravel. An unceremonious for a sailor with the sea less than 50-feet way.

  Preacher dialed another number as he turned onto a dark entrance to the port. After three rings a woman's voice answered in Italian.

  "Katarina, your name is not Katarina. You were successful in your assignment of drawing me here. I need additional information." He shot 2,500 feet into the night sky to look down on the seaport. The image courtesy of maps he reviewed two days ago on the train from Vienna. "Your cover is blown. You will need to depart immediately. Elena is not coming back. Sorry. I am here at the port. The shipment has arrived. It was all deception. The firefight at the marina was cover. It was a hit on Elena and I'm guessing Voloshyn. A takeover. Tell me now, everything you know. I need to act immediately. Tell me."

  Silence at the other end.

  He continued. "No. This line is not safe, but no time. I thought you were planted in Elena's operation by Gregor, but I was wrong. It was Papa. You're role was to play her lover, but you ended up falling. It happens. Tell me. Who is receiving the shipment? They just took possession from the now deceased sailboat captain. I am not here for Elena, I get that. So help me do what I am here to do. Stop them, stop the shipment from getting through."

  "He has always remained secret, for years. No one knows his true identity."

  "He is from Bosnia, correct?"

  "That is the rumor, the myth."

  "He sounded Serb."

  "Yes. No one knows for sure."

  "Has to be Serb." No telling what brought him to that conclusion.

  "They killed the captain? And Elena?" Katarina asked in a whisper.

  "Yes. The captain fooled them all. But he was too smart for his own good. This thing was a death sentence from the start for him. It was a kill mission." And that was it. Bing, a bell went off. He didn't need Katarina. This goose chase for Elena was just that. Nothing. He disconnected the line and dropped the large cell phone out the window, smashing it into pieces behind the racing car.

  He then reached into his pocket and pulled out his last cell phone and dialed a memorized number from somewhere in his cranial databank. The line rang twice and was answered. It was Marta, on another mobile phone she had sitting on the couch beside the one she had just spoken to him on four minutes earlier.

  "No time for code."

  "Yes." She answered.

  "The Bosnian Serb smuggler, do you know who he is?"

  "He was active in the region five years ago. Never met him, no one has. His identity, methods, transportation lines were all secret."

  "But?" He asked.

  "But extensive research was conducted before the start of the war. A member of his extended operation was captured, taken."

  "By the KGB, back to Moscow?"

  "Yes. He provided some information, not much."

  "A name? A village? What?"

  "Bojan. That is all." Marta replied.

  "Ethnic Serb?"

  "The man who was captured?"

  "Yes."

  "Yes."

  "I see it. I see the plan. The package, it isn't big. It's not guns or drugs. It is something one or two men can manage. Something very small, but very scary."

  "Nuclear?"

  "Maybe. Maybe something worse."

  "Chemical."

  "Most likely." Preacher looked out at the shimmering water in the bay.

  "Turn this over to other resources. The authorities, all of them. Now. Leave. Forget the 48 hours." Marta was insistent. "You need to get out now."

  "No time. The package is leaving the port in the next few minutes. No idea what kind of vehicle it is in. I didn't make it to the exchange." He shot back up and looked down on the map. He saw four immediate routes that then split off into 14 potential escapes.

  Preacher came back down from on high. He needed to go higher.

  "I need to call you back my love. I've got to reach a friend."

  "Damn."

  "That's my line." He severed the call and jumped on the gas to push his speed.

  Chapter 25

  "Imaging, Andrews." A male voice answered after the third ring.

  Dang. It wasn't the resource Preacher knew. No time, he pushed forward.

  "Unsecure. Impromptu. Feliz-Gravity-Hectar-2298-P."

  "What?"

  "No time for questions Andrews. Repeat: Feliz-Gravity-Hectar-2298-P. Quickly. Write it down if you need to."

  "Okay, one moment." Shuffling paper noises.

  "Andrews, stop. On the desk in front of you. Green notebook on the right. Call-in codes. Verify Feliz-Gravity-Hectar-2298-P." Preacher broke his cardinal rule yet again and drove while talking on the phone as he raced along the road ringing the port. He gave the dude at the other end 20 seconds to find the top secret call-in codes in the top secret notebook located in a top secret NSA satellite imaging facility.

  "Okay, call-in code confirmed. This line is not secure?" The satellite imaging tech was playing catch up.

  "You need a challenge code to proceed. Bottom of the page."

  "Oh, sorry. Uh, Diamond Blue?"

  "Octagon Plush."

  "Yes. That's correct. How can I help you?"

  "All of that took 43 seconds. That's time we don't have the luxury to lose. Listen to me very carefully Andrews." Preacher paused for a beat. "You have a pen to write this down, correct?"

  A few more moments of fumbling around. "Uh, yes. Go ahead."

  "I'm putting my faith in you. You've got this. Location is Trieste, Italy. Latitude 45 degrees, 38 35 north. Longitude 13 degrees 47 25 east. The port located to the northeast of the city. It ends to the south before a village. A vehicle is preparing to leave this location within the next two minutes. I need that vehicle. Find it, track it. Surf available satellites. Likely a NATO bird. Go."

  "A vehicle, at night? What kind of vehicle? What you're asking for is nearly impossible."

  "My guess is a truck or van, but not too large. Go to the location now. Get me an image. Take over whatever bird up there you need. Now."

  He spun the wheel and swerved over to the right lane to exit the Nuova Sopraelevata highway, dropping down the exit ramp for SS 15, Via Flavia. This street cut straight through the Zona Industrial with belching smokestacks, just off the eastern end of the port. From here, he would be at the small inlet beyond the port in just over three minutes. Too long. He would miss the departing vehicle with the payload on board. He listened on the phone as Andrews called out to others in the room. The guy was working for him.

  "You got it?" He spoke calmly into the cell phone.

  "Hold on. Switching to a NATO bird. Image coming online." Andrews then answered a question from someone else in the room, "No, ST7 not viable. No coverage. Try STR 141. Switch now."

  Preacher instinctively looked from the headlight lit road in front of him up at the night sky. Up there in the thermosphere, hovering above the earth are dozens of digital image capture satellites in low earth orbit. The lower satellites were the ones circling the planet every 12 hours. He needed one of them to be overhead and available to focus its ultra spatial resolution camera on Trieste and the vehicle likely leaving the inlet right now.

  The road he was on would cut off one of the four immediate routes of escape. No headlights coming hi
s way now. If any did, he would swerve and take the vehicle out and apologize later. He continued forward on Via Flavia, barreling ahead at 70 mph around turns designed for speeds less than half that.

  "Image coming through. An inlet you say?" Andrews was concentrating on the image he was receiving on his monitor.

  "Just to the south of several storage tanks. There is a structure on the property, right next to the water, correct?" Preacher gave the image from memory.

  "Yes, a structure but no vehicle headlights." Damn, too late.

  "Zoom out four hundred yards. Find me any headlights moving."

  "Ok, widening image. Looking at a quarter mile approx."

  "See anything, anything at all?"

  "A vehicle is moving fast toward the location coming from the north."

  "That's me." Pretty dang good camera on this satellite. It apparently had immediate, real-time image upload refresh. Very impressive. "Look to the south, to the southeast. Find me the headlights. They're out there."

  Andrews scanned the image on his screen. Suddenly, he spotted them. Headlights, moving east about a third of a mile from the inlet. He looked back to the west and saw the other set of headlights reach the inlet drive. "Got something. You are at the inlet?"

  "Yes. Where are they?"

  "Approximately a half-mile and some from you. Heading southeast for the moment."

  "North or South of the River?"

  "Uh... north."

  "How far from the highway?" Preacher asked as he slammed on the accelerator, peeling out, flinging gravel into the night. If the vehicle was heading southeast, that meant it was delle Saline Street headed toward the highway only a half mile away.

  "Approaching the highway in a few seconds." Andrews gave him the dire news.

  But Preacher had a hunch. If he were a smuggler, especially one as skilled and experienced as this mysterious Bojan appeared to be, highways and the potential inspections they may bring seemed like the wrong move. He shot into the sky for a few moments while his eyes remained on the road ahead. He looked down through his mind's eye at the jigsaw of roads below. Delle Saline intersected with the highway overhead in a roundabout. That was it.

  "Andrews, watch those headlights. Watch the vehicle on the roundabout. I don't think it goes up on the highway."