Last Plane to Heaven Read Free

deniability.”
    â€œFuck yeah. What’s your point?”
    â€œWe’re going to bring in a special subject. We need your team to play like Ukrainian mercs for about a week. Ride the subject hard, put them in some real fear, then let them be extracted.”
    Who was he kidding, extracted ? I knew what that signified. “What, Delta Force falls out of the sky and caps us all? No thanks.” As if this bunch of multinational nimrods could be Ukrainians. Korunov actually was, the real McCoyovich. After the fat man, Nichols with his Paki cigarettes was the safest and sanest of the bunch. There was a reason our little crowd wasn’t out eating snakes on the front line.
    â€œNo-risk deal,” said Hannaday impassively.
    â€œThat deal ain’t been written yet.”
    He folded his hands in his lap, a deliberate gesture straight out of interrogation training. “I’ll be sitting here with you the whole time.”
    Well, I could always cap him when the shit went south. Because a situation like he wanted to set up would without question run for the border before it was all over with.
    And it ain’t like I was walking out of here.
    â€œFuck you very much,” I told Korunov. “I guess we’re playing. I’ll go get the boys fired up.”
    â€œWhat are you going to tell them?”
    â€œJust some fucking lies. I got a million of ’em.” I grabbed my Stinger rack, waved it at Batugan. “You might want to slap a Band-Aid on Ming the Merciless over there before he bleeds out.”
    â€œDon’t need him anymore,” said Hannaday.
    I didn’t let the door hit me on the ass. Paymaster and contract man could gas all they wanted. I’d chosen my poison.
    *   *   *
    It took a little while to get a camp meeting together. Beier, the South African, was somewhere sleeping off a three-day bender, while the Belgians were off dust-wrestling and greasing each other down. Those two boys didn’t much like being interrupted at play, so I sent Nichols after them. I rousted the rest of the crew to find Beier.
    We wound up in the kitchen ger . It was too damned windy to talk outside. I didn’t want to be near the Antonov—for several reasons—nor near Hannaday and Korunov. The Belgians were madder than hell and Beier was propped up against a stack of North Korean beer beneath a line of curing mutton fatback that kept dripping on him. There was a potbellied stove, thankfully cold, stacks of MREs and Chinese canned goods, and us.
    I picked my nails with a Bowie knife till everyone quieted down. That was so fucking theatrical it made me want to puke, but this was the kind of shit that worked on these boys. Visible weapons and getting straight to the point.
    â€œListen up, geniuses. We’re stewed and screwed here. Korunov’s been forced to accept a transfer of our contracts. We’re getting out soon, but there’s one more task.”
    They groaned and cursed in seven languages.
    â€œYeah,” I said. “I know. We got to run a fake hostage situation with a drop-in, pretend to be Ukrainians.” Commonwealth of Independent States political bullshit. My guess was we’d be labeled later as Chechens. The ex-Sovs saw them in every shadow the way Americans saw Arabs. “So if you’ve got a Slavic accent, start using it. If you don’t got one, start practicing.”
    â€œWhat happens if we say no?” It was Nichols, speaking quietly for a change. Somehow everyone was suddenly listening.
    â€œYou’re free to walk home any time.”
    â€œWe got return bonds.” That was Echeverria, the ETA guy for whom all of Europe had gotten too hot. I didn’t figure anybody Hannaday swung in here would cop to a Basque accent.
    â€œYeah. If we can cash ’em. You see an ATM around here, Etchy?”
    Nichols again: “So what do we do?”
    â€œPut ’em through the usual course, just