Dead or Alive - Tom Clancy [189]
“Thank you, Captain,” their leader said with a smile. He spoke in English, which was accented, though Vitaliy didn’t really notice.
“All is satisfactory?”
“Yes,” the foreigner answered. He spoke in another language to one of his friends, but Vitaliy didn’t understand it. It wasn’t English and wasn’t Russian. It’s hard to identify a language you don’t speak yourself, and as the old joke went, it was Greek to the captain. One party member got into the truck and started it up, then backed it ashore, its cargo dangling from the A-frame crane on the flatbed. In the diminishing light, the triple-triangle radiation-warning label was unusually bright, which was probably intentional. A moment later another truck appeared on the dock, and the former Army truck backed to it. Another member of the charter party activated the crane controls, lifting, then lowering the cargo into the second truck’s cargo area. Whoever these people were, they were reasonably efficient. One must have used a cell phone to call ahead, Vitaliy speculated.
“So here is your money,” the leader said, handing over an envelope.
Vitaliy took it, opened it, and counted off the bills. Two thousand euros, not a bad compensation for what had been a simple enough job. And enough to buy the GPS system, plus some Starka, and a hundred for Vanya, of course.
“Thank you,” Vitaliy said politely, taking his hand. “If you need me again, you know how to contact me.”
“I may come by tomorrow, say, about ten in the morning?”
“We’ll be here,” Vitaliy promised. They’d have to start painting the deckhouse, and tomorrow was as good a day as any other.
“Then I will see you,” the leader promised. Then they shook hands, and he walked ashore.
Onshore, he talked to a companion, speaking now in his native language. “Tomorrow at ten,” he told his most senior subordinate.
“And if the port is busy?”
“We’ll just do it inside,” he explained.
“What time do we meet the plane?”
“Tomorrow at noon.”
“Excellent.”
They showed up just before ten a.m., Vitaliy saw. With the rest of his money, he hoped. Drove a different car this day. A Japanese one. They were taking Russia over. Too many of his countrymen still disliked German hardware, a lingering attitude that probably came less from history than from the war movies that the Russian film industry turned out like cigarette packs.
He was wearing a parka, loose enough for a sweater underneath, and he walked up to the boat with a smile. So, yes, maybe he did have a bonus for him. People usually smiled before giving money over.
“Good morning, Captain,” he called, coming into the wheelhouse. He looked around. Not much activity to be seen, except over at the big-ship pier, where they were on-loading cargo boxes, half a kilometer away. “Where is your mate?”
“Below, tinkering with the motors.”
“Nobody else around?” he asked with some surprise.
“No, we maintain our own craft,” Vitaliy said, reaching for his cup of tea. He didn’t make it. The 9-millimeter round went into his back without warning and transited his heart, back to front, before exiting the chest and his coat. He dropped to the steel deck, hardly grasping what had happened, before he lost consciousness for the last time.
Then the leader of the erstwhile charter party walked down the ladder to the engine room, where Vanya, as reported, was working on the manifold for the starboard engine. He hardly looked up from his tools and never saw the gun come up and fire. Two shots this time, right into the chest, from a range of three meters. When he became certain that his target was dead, Musa pocketed the pistol and walked back up. Vitaliy’s body was facedown on the deck. Musa checked the carotid pulse, and there was nothing, and with his mission completed, he walked out of the wheelhouse and down the ladder, pausing to turn and wave to the body in the wheelhouse in case anyone saw him alight, then forward and down the ramp to where his rented car was