They had dinner in a small restaurant, eating a sort of stew that wasn’t too bad. There was dark bread with it that was particularly good, as was the red wine. Mike wasn’t sure what the meat in the stew was but he’d learned not to ask too many questions about foreign food. Fortunately, Europe wasn’t into dog and cat the way the Orient was.
After finishing off the bottle of wine and a pastry something like baklava, they got back in the car and headed for “Serb town,” Dukhovic chain-smoking the whole way.
Mike could tell right away that this was one of the older parts of the town. The streets were narrow as hell and the alleys were overhung by the buildings. Some of them were simple enough to date back to the late medieval period. There were some Soviet architecture buildings as well; the cheap concrete the Soviets used was famous for being cracked and worn by time.
They found an open parking place, got out and started walking.
There were a few people walking the streets; from their hurried walk Mike guessed that they were on the way home and just hoping to get there before being mugged. The muggers and drug dealers were in evidence, standing on street corners or in the shadows of the alleys. But Mike and Dukhovic were clearly not their sort of target. Mike was on full orange alert as he walked, and his attitude was easy enough to read. It was a sort of crackling tension that said: “This may be your turf. But I’m a big dog and just passing through so don’t get busy.” Even the junkies they saw gave them a wide berth.
Besides the drug dealers, junkies, losers and thugs, there were lots and lots of white vans. They seemed to be everywhere, parked on the streets, parked in the alleys, sitting in lots by apartment buildings. Many of them had license plates from other countries: Russia, Georgia, Bulgaria, Ukraine. Mike got tired of trying to keep up, but he also didn’t want to double up, so he wrote down a bit of the tag number of each as they passed.
They stayed at it all night, covering just about every street in Serb town, watching the street people gradually fade away into the night.
“I am getting quite tired,” Dukhovic said towards dawn.
“I’ve been up for about fifty-six hours,” Mike replied. “If I can keep going, so can you. Have we covered the whole area?”
“There is a section of small warehouses,” Dukhovic said, yawning and pointing. “That way, about two kilometers. Usually not many protectors over there, but they sometimes use the houses along the river.”
“Well, I’m willing to ride,” Mike said, looking around. “The car’s about three blocks that way, right?”
“Yes,” Dukhovic replied, heading towards the car. “What is it you are looking for? I see that you are waving a device at the vans.”
“The Chechens stole some radioactive isotopes from the Russians,” Mike lied. “Not enough to make much of a radiological bomb, but we think they’re planning something like it. The device is a radiation detector.”
“Don’t they have those sorts of things on helicopters?” Dukhovic asked, confused and tired.
“Yeah,” Mike said. “But nobody thinks they’re coming here except me. I guess the detectors are all being used in Russia.”
They got in the car and drove around the section of warehouses, looking for white vans. These buildings were almost all Soviet-style architecture, running close to the river, which had a small port. Finally, Mike spotted a van on a side street and waved Dukhovic to stop.
He got out and walked down the street, casually, as he had at least a hundred times that night. As he waved his arm at the van, though, his ear was practically blasted by a screech from the Geiger counter. He could vaguely see into the van as he passed, and it had had the seats removed. It also had a Russian license plate. Pay dirt.
He continued walking to the far end, though, just another night person on the way home. Or, as it may be, going down to the river. The warehouses petered out short of the road that paralleled the river and there were more of the “older” buildings along there, these showing particular abuse from the war. He waved Dukhovic into a parking place and got in.
“What time do they start to move the girls?” Mike said, looking around. There were a few cars starting to move on the streets as the day people went to their jobs.
“A little after eight,” Dukhovic said. “That van doesn’t make sense where it is, though. These houses might hold girls; there’s a brothel down the street,” he added, pointing. “But all there are up that street are warehouses.”
“Well, it’s radioactive as hell,” Mike replied, thinking. “If I don’t come back, call Northcote and tell him to send in IFOR.”
He got out and walked back up the street, examining the warehouse without really looking at it. There was a small personnel door and a much larger roll-up door. The personnel door was metal and probably locked.
However, SEALs had access to some pretty obscure schools and one of them had covered “discreet entry.” He didn’t see any signs of life in the warehouse, no lights, no sound, so he slipped up to the door and slid out a set of picklocks.
It had been years since he’d really practiced with picklocks and it took him forever to get the door open. But finally the lock clicked over. He put the picklocks away and drew his sidearm, carefully screwing on the suppressor. That done, he slid it into the back of his pants and stepped through the door.
The room had a large crane system rolled over by the back wall, a large forge on the far left-hand side, several large metal tables, a drill press and an office on the right, near the door he had entered. There were five men in the room, cleaning up. Two of them were wearing heavy rubber gloves and appeared to be picking up bits of metal off the floor while two others were sweeping up the floor. The fifth turned and regarded him balefully for a moment, shifting so as to be behind one of the metal tables. There was a strong smell in the air that he couldn’t quite place, but it reminded him of shooting rooms. Melted lead, that was it. It made him feel quite at home.
Nadhim Medein looked up in surprise and annoyance as a Westerner walked in the door. Nadhim was from Yemen and had been a member of one terrorist group or another since he was a teenager. He had first joined the Popular Front for the Revolutionary Jihad in Yemen then traveled to the Tribal Areas in Pakistan where he attended jihadi madrassas. Eventually he was picked to aid the Taliban in their jihad for control of Afghanistan. He had been in the Taliban in Afghanistan on September 11, 2001, when the Great Martyrs had brought down the Towers of the Great Satan and had danced in joy with all the other Taliban at the news. He loved, still, to watch the video of the towers falling.
But he had also experienced, firsthand, the vengeance of the Great Satan and eventually fled Afghanistan to continue the jihad where it might bear less bitter fruit. He had fought in Fallujah with Al Islam and had been in Syria when this mission was formed. All he knew about the mission was that a bomb had been constructed in this building and he was to clean up so that IFOR would have no evidence of what had been done there. It was not the fiercest job in the world, but one that had to be done quickly and surely. Nadhim Medein was a soldier of the jihad who was known to be quick and sure. So he had been asked to participate and, after ensuring that it was a mission that would be useful to the work of Allah, he had agreed.
And he was sure he had locked the front door, but the man just opened it up and walked in. He was unarmed, apparently an American from the dress and walk. Nadhim was sure they had been discovered, but he tried to dissemble.