Deathlist Read Free Page B

op in total, five Serbs and the Brit. They had been divided into three separate teams. Bill Deeds and Sinisa Markovic were the kill team. They were tasked with knocking out the comms link at the RV on top of Pen y Fan. Two more guys were on the overwatch. Their job was to observe the target area at the Storey Arms. That left Kavlak and Petrovich. They were the third team, and they had the most dangerous job of the lot. They were the delivery team.
    Kavlak killed the engine and sat back in his chair. Petrovich reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a pack of twenty Marlboro Reds. His hands were shaking as he plucked out a cigarette from the pack and popped it between his lips. Kavlak turned to him and arched an eyebrow.
    ‘You really think that’s a good idea, nephew? Did you forget I only quit smoking last month?’
    Petrovich froze. He was several years younger than Kavlak, and it showed. He was all attitude and front. He sported a mohawk and he had a young, podgy face and smooth hands that hadn’t done any killing. He probably spent his downtime listening to Dr Dre, playing PlayStation and watching Scarface . The kid was out of his depth and Kavlak instantly knew it had been a mistake to bring him along. Realising his error, Petrovich plucked the smoke from his lips and carefully slid it back into the pack. Kavlak breathed a little easier.
    ‘What’s the time, uncle?’ Petrovich asked, for maybe the thousandth time since they’d set off that morning.
    ‘Try to relax,’ said Kavlak. ‘We have to wait a while yet, and you’re making both of us nervous.’
    Petrovich stilled his legs. Kavlak nodded at him, then looked away. Patience, Kavlak reminded himself. The kid needed patience. He was new to the game. Kavlak and the other Serbs had all been soldiers back during the dark days of the Bosnian war. That was how Kavlak got into the bomb-making business. He started off small, fixing up crude explosive mixes in the back of battered old Zastavas and blowing them up outside Croatian government offices. Then he moved on to bigger, more sophisticated devices. He car-bombed Croat leaders and terrorised their supporters. That was when the Tiger had taken notice, and asked him to be a part of a team to carry out an attack right on their enemy’s doorstep. Kavlak had jumped at the chance.
    The bomb stowed in the back of the Mondeo was a thing of beauty. Fifty clear-white blocks of C4 had been carefully arranged in the boot. Each block weighed 1.25 pounds and looked like a brick made out of putty. Half a dozen one-kilo bags had been placed either side of the C4. The bags were stuffed with ball bearings and eight-inch nails. Shrapnel. The explosive package was rigged with a length of det cord, thin plastic tubing that looked like rope on a washing line. Except the det cord was filled with pentaerythritol tetranitrate, otherwise known as PETN high explosive. One end of the det cord was attached to the bomb. The other end was attached to a battery cell and a radio receiver unit. The detonator was one end of a two-way walkie-talkie, purchased from a hardware store in Newport and set to the same frequency as the receiver unit. Once the remote was activated, it would transmit a signal to the receiver and spark the battery into life, sending a charge down the det cord, triggering the bomb.
    It was going to be his masterpiece.
    A single block of C4 packed enough of a punch to blow a hole in the side of a wall. Half a dozen blocks could destroy a large truck. Fifty blocks – equivalent to sixty-two-and-a-half pounds – would cause a hell of a bang. There would be an initial outward explosion, a huge orange fireball engulfing everything inside a twenty-five metre radius. There would be a second, even more lethal inward explosion as the gases compressed and sucked everything towards the centre. Anyone who survived that force would be caught in a shower of lethal shrapnel, hot metal shards lacerating flesh and piercing vital