Free Die Trying by Chris Ryan Page A

came upon him, his chest swelling and retracting in an erratic beat. Nearer to Valon, Gardner saw that his right arm was missing from the bicep down. Strips of flesh flapped against his bone. The HE grenade had mashed him up but failed to kill him.
Gardner figured the round had landed a couple of metres short of the target.
Anything inside a three-metre kill zone and Valon would have been dust.
    Sad twists of his entrails seeped out of the guy’s abdomen. Flaps of skin, hard black chips, protruded from the wound. The stench of burned human flesh hit Gardner. He retched in the back of his throat. Knelt down beside Valon.
    The Albanian spoke in childish gurgles. His one good lung fought to fill his body with air. The right side of his face looked as though someone had roasted it on a barbecue. Warts and boils on his skin crackled like pork fat. His eyes were scorched opaque.
    Gardner spotted something red on his right wrist. Too bright and plasticky to be blood. He bent forward for a closer look.
    And did a double-take.
    Valon wore a bracelet identical to the one Gardner had been given by Land and had put on the Albanian’s left wrist. Not quite believing what he was seeing, Gardner reached for Valon’s left arm. The same fucking tag, and the same fucking question: what’s Valon doing with two MI6 bracelets?
    ‘I’m with the Firm,’ Valon said, answering Gardner’s curious face. ‘I work… have been for years… Since the war.’ His facial muscles convulsed. Valon took a deep breath.
    ‘Back at Aimée’s flat,’ Gardner said. ‘You deliberately missed your shot, didn’t you?’
    Valon nodded, his mouth emitting a guttural murmur. Some new and hidden pain was making itself heard inside his mutilated body. ‘Jesus, I… couldn’t give up my cover. They wanted… you dead. I had to make it look like… you were.’
    He examined his wounds, his mouth ajar in horror. The skin around the right eyeball had been blown away. Gardner could almost make out the connective cords at the back of his eye.
    ‘You must stop the Russians… They’re going to a rendezvous in… shit!’
    Gardner closed his eyes for a second. He’d seen a lot of trauma wounds in his time, but nothing as messed up as Valon’s. His were gopping.
    ‘Drobny, on the border,’ Valon continued, drawing in breath and choking on it like glass. ‘The church. Two o’clock. It is very important you get to the truck. Before it continues its journey and—’
    ‘And Aimée? You told me she was nabbed by the Grey Wolf. Is that a lie?’
    Valon was delirious. ‘Sotov. He has her.’ He gulped. Made a gargling noise in his throat.
    The words gnawed at Gardner’s stomach. He pushed Aimée to the back of his mind.
    ‘What’s in the truck?’ he said.
    He detected a soft, flopping sound inside the other man’s chest.
    ‘Talk to me, Klint. The fucking truck.’
    But Valon was on the brink. His breath stilled like frost in his mouth.
    Gardner watched him pass over.
    He dug out his mobile, called Land. Needed to give him the heads-up on how the drug exchange had gone fubar.
    Six rings, seven – and no fucking answer.
    An automated female voice asked him to leave a message after the bleep.
    Gardner declined. He knew that the Russians were transporting the truck and Sotov had followed directly behind it in the Lincoln. The odds on him accompanying the truck all the way to Drobny were more than reasonable.
    So that’s what you’ll do. Get to the village of Drobny in the hour. That’ll give you just under thirty minutes to intercept whatever the fuck’s in the truck. Time-wise it’s tighter than a Jock at a Poundstretcher, but since when you did roll any other way?
    He raced back towards the Nissan.

15
     
    1253 hours.
     
    ‘That was crazy,’ Popov said, laughing, as he drove through the factory gates. The site had once been the pride of Serbian industry, building cars and motorbikes for the West. Now it was a barren pit, the machinery rusted brown,