Hunter (34 page)

Alex Morgan kicked the door in. Dave Sutherland followed. They burst into the room with ferocious, determined intensity, not knowing what to expect on the other side.

MP5s high, standing shoulder to shoulder, Morgan covered left and Sutherland right. In a moment, Morgan took in the scene that confronted them.

First there was the prize, Dragoslav Obrenovic. He was directly in front of Morgan, captured in the sights of Morgan's gun, standing at a huge ornamented desk, dumbstruck by the unexpected appearance of the Intrepid agents. Behind Drago was his portrait, a monstrosity that took up most of the wall space behind the desk. The vile display of arrogance by the mass murderer, war criminal and fugitive was grotesque in the extreme. Shadowed beneath his former glory, the old man was dead still, eyes wide open, long hair wild, hands clasped to the edge of the desk.

On the right-hand edge of Morgan's vision was Vukasin Petrovic, the Wolf. Sutherland had him covered but still he remained defiant with a gun in each hand, one pointing straight at Drago, the other at the floor.

Wrapped around them all were dozens of digital screens interspersed with the most bizarre collection of oil paintings depicting sexually explicit nudes. There were no windows and the place stank. At the 
epicentre, in a crumpled mess at the Intrepid agents' feet, was the body of junior Obrenovic, bleeding from a catastrophic head wound. There was blood everywhere. The body was twitching. That would stop soon.

The Wolf's expression mirrored Drago's: shock and incredulity. His eyes flickered as he considered his options. He went for it. The left-hand gun moved upward from the floor in an arc toward Sutherland. At the same time, he began firing blindly in the general direction of Drago.

The priority of Intrepid was to bring these two in to face the ICTY to answer for their crimes against humanity. That objective was paramount in the minds of both agents. Dave Sutherland responded faultlessly. The ex-Navy SEAL countered the Wolf's action in less than a heartbeat. He threw himself in a roll to the right behind a heavy chair. The MP5 was thrust to his side on the sling and from a holster on his left thigh he drew an X26 ECD Taser. The weapon appeared above the chair, clasped tight in both hands and before the Wolf had the chance to react to the moving target, Sutherland fired.

With a sudden crack, the Taser shot two bullet-shaped electrodes, which trailed wires that connected the electrodes to the weapon. Both hit the Wolf perfectly, one in the torso and the other in the chest. He dropped to his knees, contorting in uncontrollable spasms, fists clenched, elbows bent, face locked in a jaw-breaking grimace, as 50 000 volts seized his body.

In the midst of the spasms, Sutherland went for him, holding the trigger down to maintain the charge, ensuring the bastard enjoyed the full experience.

When he reached him, Sutherland released the trigger, punching the Wolf hard in the face, dropping him to the floor. Compliant, the Wolf received the plasti-cuffs treatment, followed by duct tape.

A simultaneous confrontation was happening across the room.

As the Wolf's rounds shattered the lamps and ornaments that adorned Drago's desk, Morgan leapt across the room and hurled himself through the gunfire to take Drago down. The Wolf's rounds ricocheted but not one of them found their target.

As Sutherland brought the Wolf under control, Morgan was sliding across the desktop only to see Drago suddenly descend from view.

Crashing through the piles of debris that littered the mile-wide desk, Alex Morgan arrived on the other side to discover an open trapdoor and a set of narrow steps that disappeared into a void. He flipped his NVG down on his helmet and threw himself down the stairs.

A dozen wooden steps confronted Morgan as he rushed down into the darkness.

Through the NVG the space was alive but it didn't discount the threat. Drago may have been old but he was still dangerous. As Morgan's foot was about to hit the last step, a burst of rounds from a machine-pistol came from the left and ripped through the air directly in front of his face, crashing into the wood panels at the base of the stairs and sending splintered shards in every direction. Morgan spun toward the shooting and dropped. He brought the SIG around and fired two rounds high into the ceiling to get Drago's head down. Morgan didn't want to kill him - Davenport was expecting he'd be brought in alive.

Morgan chanced a look around the bottom of the stairs. It was clear. He rushed into a narrow dogleg on the stairwell where just three steps remained. A door was open at the bottom step. Beyond the door was the outside world.

Morgan weighed up his options. He couldn't afford for this to become protracted. There were two aircraft on station overhead ready to pick them up and if it took too long, they could lose the aircraft to a greater priority.

He launched out of the doorway.

The NVG took him to the left behind an old water pump. He scanned. Nothing. He moved fast, across to the right to a large tank that once must have serviced the pump and scanned again. Still nothing. Fuck it! Slowly, he moved away, putting himself in Drago's shoes. What did he want to do? He wanted to escape.

Morgan began to work his way around to the front of the house, toward the driveway. He knew for sure the Wolf's Mercedes was there. Possibly other cars, too.

As he moved across the wide expanse to the front of the house, working his way through overgrown bushes and clusters of rock, he heard heavy breathing coming from just around the corner. Slowly, quietly, he reholstered the SIG. He took another pace forward and his boot kicked a cluster of rocks on the uneven surface. Another hail of bullets from the machine-pistol crashed into the rocks a few feet ahead of him. Morgan stood his ground.

"Stay where you are!" Drago yelled, short of breath, coughing a phlegmy, heavy-smoker's cough before spitting a gobful of the muck out. "I'll fucking kill you if you take another step."

"It's all over, Drago," Morgan replied calmly from the side of the building. "Your son is dead, Petrovic has been captured and you're next." Morgan had eased himself hard up against the wall and, through the NVG turned his view toward the voice.
Got ya.

"Fuck you!" Drago bellowed, still coughing. His body heaved from the effort of unexpected physical exertion. "I'll kill myself before I'll be taken in. Have you thought of that?"

"Yes," Morgan replied and with that, he stepped out into the open, aimed his X26 ECD Taser and fired. Both electrodes scored direct hits.

Dragoslav Obrenovic fell to the ground in a contorted, twitching heap.

"You enjoyed that," observed Sutherland.

"Yes, I did," Morgan replied with a smile. "A little too much, I think."

They laughed.

"Righto, Dave," said Morgan. Drago and the Wolf were both sitting nearby gagged, cuffed and strapped to separate fence posts on the edge of the DZ. "Leave these two bastards with me and call in the gear. The sooner those Hercs can get us the fuck out of here the better."

"Already done, bud. While you were chasing Grandpa over there, I was on the radio. The gear will be here any second now."

They looked skyward.

"And here we go! You may want to stand back a bit."

On cue, Morgan spotted two large bundles traveling toward them under parachutes. With the accuracy only the best technology can provide, the bundles thudded to the ground right in the middle of the DZ.

The Joint Precision Airdrop System - JPADS - was designed for air-dropping specialist equipment or general resupply gear to an exact point on a map via a GPS-based computer guidance system that steered the parachute straight to the target.

"You think these two are up to it?" Sutherland asked, deliberately trying to rattle their prisoners.

"They don't have any choice, mate,' Morgan replied.

Minutes later, Morgan and Sutherland retrieved the gear from the DZ and began getting their prisoners ready. Sutherland had control of the Wolf and Morgan prepped Drago. Meanwhile, two NATO MC-130E Hercules Combat Talon I aircraft were on station high above, flying in a holding pattern, ready to commence the extraction.

"OK, Drago," said Morgan, fighting hard to control his loathing of the man. The darkness helped. "If you want to be able to breathe on this little trip of ours then you're going to need this tape off your mouth. But if you make one sound I'll tape you mouth shut tighter than it is now and it won't come off until you're in the aircraft. Nod if you understand."

Drago nodded submissiveley, watching with fear and helplessness as, right beside him, Morgan began to the lay out two large, heavily insulated, illuminous orange jumpsuits. Sutherland was doing the same next to the Wolf.

Morgan unwound the duct tape and Drago instantly inhaled huge lungfuls of air.

"Who the fuck are you people?" he asked contemptuously, poison in his voice. "And what the fuck are you doing with us?"

"Well," Morgan replied, "as I said to one of your countryman not so long ago, consider us facilitators. Nothing more. Now get up."

Morgan hauled him to his feet, walked him to the gear, helped Drago step awkwardly into the padded legs of the jumpsuit, and began to pull the suit up over Drago's body.

"Don't forget, bud," Sutherland said. "Leave his wrists cuffed and zip his arms up inside the suit. Strap the suit arms into the harness, so they don't flap around. I'll do the same for this guy."

"Roger that," Morgan replied. "How long we got?"

"Five minutes for the first aircraft and ten minutes after that the second will come through. He nearly ready?"

"Yeah," said Morgan.

"I asked you what you're doing with us," Drago said. This time the voice was less venomous. Fear was starting to play a larger role.

"It's very simple. We're going to put you on a plane," Morgan answered truthfully, pulling on his own suit. "And you'll be pleased to know that there are no queues with our airline. You'll go straight from here to your seat."

Drago fell silent. Somehow he didn't think it was going to be as simple as that at all.

Morgan and Sutherland began shoving their weapons and parachute gear into large bags that they attached to their harnesses.

Two minutes later Morgan and Drago were harnessed in a macabre parody of spooning, with Morgan behind to control the prisoner. Sutherland was just tightening the last few straps on the harness supporting him and the Wolf. They were soon in exactly the same configuration. The harnesses were each connected to 150 yards of high-strength, braided nylon cable. At the other end of the cables were inflatable blimp-shaped balloons that Morgan and Sutherland began inflating from helium gas tanks. Once the balloons were inflated, Sutherland, who was taking the Wolf 
up on the first lift, released his balloon and the cable pulled skyward to its maximum length.

"Now we wait, Petrovic," said Sutherland.

But there was no answer. The Wolf remained totally silent, despite also having the duct tape removed. He was beaten. He knew it.

"Thirty seconds, Alex," Sutherland said via the radio headset. "See you back there."

"I think you owe me a beer for this," Morgan responded. "Good luck."

The deep rumble of the first Hercules came in overhead and before Sutherland had time to reply, he and the Wolf were gone.

*

"OK, so now it's our turn, Drago," said Morgan.

"What the fuck just happened to them?" Drago gasped, hardly attempting to mask his terror. He was breathing heavily, his head was completely shrouded within the thickly padded hood of the illuminous suit. The drawstring of the hood had been pulled so tightly that only his nose and mouth were open to the air. Drago was completely out of his comfort zone, in the grip of a fear he had never known.

Morgan released their balloon and the cable began to feed skyward.

"Well," Morgan began, "We're using something called surface-to-air recovery. The CIA developed it back in the days of the Cold War. On approach to pick us up right now is a Hercules fitted with a big V-shaped hook on its nose. It'll catch our cable in its hook, balloon gets cut off, and we trail along under
neath until the team onboard winches us in. Like I said before, it's very simple."

Drago was speechless. He had no concept of what was about to happen to him and trying to understand it all was overwhelming.

"Thirty seconds," said Morgan. "I hope we can find you a good suit. You're going to need it in The Hague."

THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL TRIBUNAL FOR THE FORMER YUGOSLAVIA (ICTY)
THE HAGUE, NETHERLANDS
THREE MONTHS LATER

Major General Reginald "Nobby" Davenport CBE, DSO, MC, took his seat discreetly at the back of the public gallery of Court Room 1 and watched with a mixture of great sadness, accomplishment and anticipation as the wheels of international justice began to turn once more.

It was almost impossible to fathom the depth and significance of the hatred, jealousies and private conspiracies that had all given rise to this day, nor the actions that had been necessary to bring these men to justice. Lives had been lost, trusts had been betrayed and personal traumas endured by those burned by the fire of the
Zmajevi.
Despite it all, Davenport mused, none of the events that had occurred recently, which finally brought about their arrests, held a candle to the crimes for which these men were actually here to answer.

During the Balkan wars of the early 1990s, men such as Obrenovic presided over many serious violations of international humanitarian law, and per
petrated executions and atrocities on a mass scale, including torture and rape, among their standard operating procedures. Waging a campaign of immeasurable violence, amounting to the systematic destruction of a civilian population, their crimes against humanity and campaign of genocide resulted in the deaths of over 140 000 people, with millions more affected by the bloodshed, driven from their homes into a bleak, uncertain, terrifying future.

But, finally, justice had prevailed.

Through the paneled glass to his right that separated the gallery from the courtroom, Davenport saw members of the prosecution preparing themselves ahead of their opening statements. To his left were the defense team shuffling papers, talking in hushed tones, similarly preparing. He didn't envy them at all. The prospect of genuinely being obliged to mount a defense for a cold-blooded monster like Dragoslav Obrenovic was abhorrent to Davenport. But still, justice must follow its course.

Directly ahead of him sat the judges, resplendent in the red-fronted gowns of the tribunal. There were three of them: two men sitting either side of a woman, the chief judge. All three were members of the Trial Division of the International Criminal Court, the ICC. They'd been seconded to ICTY in order to conduct the trial of Obrenovic when Madeline Clancy and her colleagues had necessarily recused themselves.

A registry official located in front of the judges stood and addressed the court.

"Your Honors, this is case S-L-0-5-0-6-A; the prosecutor versus Dragoslav Obrenovic."

"Thank you, Madame Registrar,' replied the chief 
judge formally. "I'd like to have the appearances please. Prosecution first, followed by the defense."

Over a number of minutes both leaders of the prosecution and defense introduced the respective teams. All were noted officially for the record.

"Thank you, everybody. I note also for the record that Mr Obrenovic is present as well," the chief judge announced, looking across to her right at the accused.

Davenport couldn't help but return his gaze toward Obrenovic. Many within Court Room 1 that day would not be aware just how much he had been cleaned up prior to his appearance before the tribunal. The long hair had been cut into a neat, respectable short back and sides and the beard was gone. What remained was a tired and aged but still recognizable caricature of the former brigadier general of the Army of Republika Srpska, made infamous the world over by the news footage and press coverage of him taken at the time of the war. He sat behind his defense team in a baggy gray suit, with headphones to assist in the translation process, looking for all the world like a poor old man who had somehow been mistaken for a horrible, calculating, brutal killer.

As Davenport's eyes remained fixed on Obrenovic, he heard the familiar tone of Madeline Clancy's voice in his ear.

"I want to hear the prosecution's opening statement," she whispered conspiratorially as she sat down behind him.

"Really," Davenport replied over his shoulder. "Is that the only reason you're here?"

"No," said Judge Clancy emphatically. "I really just want to watch this bastard squirm."