Craig Russell - The Carnival Master

‘Vorobyeva?’

Buslenko shook his head. ‘And we think Tenishchev and Serduchka too.’

Belotserkovsky swung into the lodge and closed the door. Stoyan came in from the back. ‘Clear at the rear. But there’s bad news there as well. Someone has disabled the vehicles. If we want to get out of here, then we have to walk.’

‘That should make it easy for them,’ said Belotserkovsky grimly.

‘Enough of that,’ said Buslenko. ‘I’m not going to let that bastard Vitrenko fillet me the way he did Vorobyeva.’

‘So you think he’s out there?’ asked Olga.

‘Oh, yes. If the prey is special to him, he likes to be there for the kill.’ Buslenko paused, frowning. ‘Funny… I said exactly the same thing to someone just yesterday.’ He felt a sudden panic in his chest as he thought about Sasha. Sasha was no soldier. He was an analyst. A soft and easy target. The thought must have registered in his face.

‘What’s wrong?’ said Olga.

‘The guy I got to put the team together… He was the only person who knew we would be here. They must have got to him.’

‘Bribery?’

‘No…’ Buslenko shook his head. ‘Never. Not Sasha. They must have

…’ He let the thought die.

Belotserkovsy rested a hand on Buslenko’s shoulder. ‘If it was him, Taras, he’s not in any pain now. They wouldn’t have kept him once they knew we were here.’

The BMW braked as it came around the corner and found Maria’s Saxo head-on in its path, but the tyres aquaglided on the wet surface. The driver corrected by accelerating and swinging the BMW to avoid the Saxo. By the time he passed Maria where she stood at the side of the road, she had the illegal automatic aimed at the flank of the speeding car. She fired six rounds in rapid succession as it passed and the side windows shattered. The BMW swung from side to side, straightened, then accelerated away. Maria fired three more rounds at the rear of the car as it disappeared into the distance.

Maria watched the BMW for a moment, then took a second clip from her pocket, rammed it into the grip, snapped the carriage back to put a round in the chamber and stood, arms locked before her, waiting for the BMW to come back. It didn’t. Her heart pounded. The rain plastered her newly darkened hair to her scalp and she was chilled to the core of her being.

And she felt better than she had in months.

The bastard had seen her as an easy victim. She had seen herself as an easy victim. But now the hunted was the hunter. Nine rounds into the body of the car: she must have hit

him somewhere. Maria ran back, spun the Saxo around in the road once more, and headed off after the BMW.

They had been in the lodge for three hours. They had not allowed themselves a light, nor the comfort of food or drink.

‘I don’t get it,’ said Buslenko. ‘Why don’t they just get it over with? There’s only four of us in here. We’re kilometres away from civilisation. They could finish us off with silenced fire and no one would be any the wiser. Where are they?’

Stoyan nodded. ‘It doesn’t make sense. And they’ve covered their tracks pretty well.’ He peered out of the window into the moonlight. ‘Maybe they’re waiting for us to try to get out.’

Belotserkovsky suddenly looked agitated. ‘Maybe there’s no one out there,’ he said at last. ‘Maybe it’s the enemy within we should be worrying about.’

‘What are you talking about?’ said Buslenko.

‘Maybe there’s no Vitrenko force out there. Maybe we’re dealing with an infiltrator.’

‘That’s crap,’ said Stoyan, but he looked uneasy.

‘Taras is right that only his friend knew about this location,’ said Belotserkovsky. ‘That is outside all of us.’ He looked at Olga Sarapenko. ‘She’s not one of us. How do we know she isn’t in Vitrenko’s pay?’

‘That’s bullshit,’ said Buslenko.

‘No… no, wait a minute,’ said Stoyan. ‘ She was outside immediately before Vorobyeva was killed.’

Buslenko’s face darkened. ‘Enough! Are you trying to tell me that she,’ he indicated Olga with a nod of his head, ‘was able to sneak up on the best personal security specialist I’ve ever worked with? No offence, Captain Sarapenko.’

‘None taken,’ she said. ‘Even I know my limits. But maybe this is why they haven’t finished us off. Maybe they’re waiting for us to come apart at the seams.’

‘Good point.’ Buslenko’s expression suggested that he had made a decision. He looked at his watch. ‘It’ll be light in two hours. I want us out of the woods by then. Get kitted up. We’re going for a walk.’

‘Stoyan, you take point.’ Buslenko looked up at the sky. The moon was low, caressing the bristling tip of the forest. He found himself blessing the few clouds that had drifted in from the west. ‘Captain Sarapenko, I take it you know how to use one of these…’ He tossed a Vepr assault rifle to her.

‘I can handle it.’

Buslenko pointed to the river to the left of the hunting lodge. ‘Same as before – we use the bank as cover. Keep low and keep together. If we’re going to encounter opposition, it’ll come from the forest, where there’s more cover. They’ll have to expose themselves to attack. The one thing we have to watch out for is grenades. Or they’ve maybe predicted our route and set booby traps. Watch out for tripwires.’

Buslenko gave Stoyan a gestured countdown. On one, Stoyan rushed out of the lodge, across the drive and down the river bank. He ran crouched low but fast. Buslenko waited. No gunfire. Stoyan indicated the all-clear and Buslenko gave Olga Sarapenko the order to cross, then Belotserkovsky. Still no attack.

It didn’t make sense. Now would have been the time to pick them off. It seemed as if they were running from ghosts. Maybe Belotserkovsky had a point. Maybe it was one of them. But there was no one in the remaining group that he could have imagined taking out Vorobyeva with such ease. Certainly not the woman.

Buslenko scoured the fringe of the woods with the night-vision scope he had attached to his Vepr. Finally, he bolted across the snow-encrusted track and down the river bank.

Maria spent three hours searching for the BMW. She had been sure she would find it slewed off the road, the Ukrainian slumped over the wheel. She was vaguely shocked at her lack of concern for the driver. She could be pretty certain that she had just either killed another human being or seriously injured him. But, there again, he had tried to kill her and death was something these people traded in. Maria backtracked to check for turn-offs she might have missed: there were none. He had got away. She checked the fuel gauge: she was running low and she was not entirely sure which way would lead her back to the autobahn and Cologne. And it was as if she herself was running out of fuel; the leaden, aching tiredness of her system was draining the adrenalin that had flooded it during the chase. Eventually she came to a junction which indicated Dusseldorf, Cologne and Autobahn 57. She turned onto it and headed back towards the city.

They had covered five kilometres in the last hour, by Buslenko’s reckoning. Not bad considering the terrain and the darkness. There had been no booby traps, no ambush. And, Buslenko was beginning to believe, no enemy waiting in the woods. The woman, Olga Sarapenko, had done particularly well, considering she hadn’t had to go through the same rigours in training as the rest of them.

‘Take a rest,’ he ordered them.

‘I’m telling you…’ Belotserkovsky dropped down next to Buslenko, resting his back against the frozen river bank. ‘There’s no attacking force. It must have been one of us.’