‘Or, we could hole up somewhere. See any place strategic?’ Gibbs said.
‘There is the small town hall that looked deserted. It’s a small white building on the right-hand side of the road as you drive in,’ Shredder said.
‘It has windows on both ground and first floors, overlooking a small square and the main road. Not sure what the back of the building looks like,’ Killey said.
Gibbs nodded. ‘Okay then, the town hall it is. Shredder, tell Smithy what the plan is and then follow us in. Killey, you turn off earlier than us and recon the back of the town hall. If it’s clear, see if you can gain access that way.’
• • •
The trucks sped over a small hill, bringing the small town of Blonie into view. Gibbs could see the truck roadblock in the main street surrounded by what seemed to be deserted shops. He drove down the main street and was about to stop the convoy when he heard the familiar rattle of gunfire to his left, quickly followed by slamming of bullets into the side of the truck.
‘Contact. Left,’ he screamed into the radio and jumped on the accelerator.
They raced towards the roadblock, the heads of the men who were manning it, bobbing about as they rushed to get into position. The welcome sight of the little town hall came up on his right. Gibbs grabbed the large steering wheel, yanked it hard and the truck’s wheels screeched as the large metal mass veered off the road and bumped up onto the pavement. Everything seemed to slow down as he realised a large rock sculpture positioned outside the main door was blocking his path, and he had to turn and aim for the space in between the lump of concrete and the front building. This would give them additional cover.
He jumped on the brakes and brought the truck to a screaming halt. In a single movement, he grabbed the SA80 machine gun from the seat next to him, opened the door and jumped down. The truck lurched as Smithy brought his truck to a halt against the back of Gibbs’s truck.
‘Backup, Smithy,’ Gibbs screamed. Smithy reversed and left a metre gap. Bullets kept slapping into the opposite side of the truck. ‘Everyone out and get down behind the truck,’ Gibbs shouted.
‘Smithy, get to the main door and kick it in.’
Gibbs swung around and looked at a yellow painted department store across the road. Flashes from the barrels of machine guns had emerged from the windows, and he raised the SA80 and returned short bursts of fire. A puff of concrete and a window frame flicked debris upwards, and the shooters hastily withdrew for cover. Gibbs continued firing bursts when he heard a screeching crash behind him.
He spun around to see Shredder sliding the motorbike on its side, scraping across the cobbled paving before it collided against the white wall. A smiling Shredder jumped up and swung his SA80 around.
‘Try the brakes next time,’ Gibbs shouted.
‘Didn’t have any.’
‘Help Smithy with that bloody door, will you?’
‘Sure thing, boss,’ he replied and joined Smithy in shouldering the door a few times before the lock finally gave way.
Gibbs fired another burst across the street before swinging the heavy tailgate of his truck down. ‘Okay, folks, I want you all to get ready for a short sprint.’
The petrified scientists lowered themselves to the floor of the truck and scooted across on their backsides until they all slipped down to the ground behind Gibbs.
‘Wait!’ Gibbs shouted, blasting off a long burst until the SA80 fell silent with no more ammo.
‘Move.’ he shouted, and grabbed the professor, dragging him along as he followed the other scientists through the doorway and into the large empty lobby.
They slammed the door shut behind them. ‘You two, take positions at the windows on either side of the door. The rest of you, help me barricade the door. Shredder, take our guests up the large staircase at the back until we find a safe place for them on the floor above.’
• • •
‘Chilemba, was it your men who started firing first?’ René said as they watched the scene from behind the roadblock.
‘No, they would not just open fire without orders to do so. Someone else must have started it.’
‘Who the hell fired before I gave the order?’ René snapped into the radio receiver. Silence.
‘Come with me, Chilemba. We need to get back upstairs and have a better look across at the town hall.’ They crouched low as they ran and slipped down the side street to reach the metal fire escape. Climbing quickly, they reached the room which had three Kenyan soldiers positioned in it and crawled over the wooden floor to the windows.
Two green trucks blocked most of the view of the front door, but they could see the occasional muzzle flash from the window to the right of the door.
‘Damn it!’ cursed René. ‘They’re safely tucked up in there. We are going to struggle to get them out.’
• • •
Gibbs checked the status of his men and then went to look for Shredder, who had taken the scientists up to the first floor. He wound his way up a large white marble staircase and came to a red-carpeted landing with large tapestries hanging the full length of the wall. Shredder had found an old function room in the centre of the building, with no windows where he was stood speaking to the professor with another GGC team member.
‘Shredder, can I have a word please?’ Gibbs called from the door.
Shredder and Gibbs moved over to one of the windows on the other side of the landing that looked out over their parked trucks and the green grass of the square, in front of the hall. Gibbs opened the window and fired a few rounds at the men he had spotted hiding at the corner of the building to the east of their position.
When they returned fire, he quickly withdrew. ‘There seem to be two groups out there. One positioned on the first floor of the department store and the other at the corner of the building to our right. I assume the latter have come up from the roadblock.’
Shredder was scanning the road through his binoculars. ‘Boss, take a look. Middle window, top floor. It’s that African with the dreadlocked hair.’
‘What?’ Gibbs said, grabbing the binoculars. He only needed a brief look, and there was his man, firing from the top floor window at Gibbs’s men below, his dreadlocks flailing with the force of the recoil from the machine gun. ‘Well, well. He seems to have joined the resistance,’ Gibbs said, panning back down to the men on the corner.
‘Fuck me. René Chabal is also here,’ he said. ‘He just ran out of the department store to join the men on the corner.’
‘You were right, after all, boss. He faked his own bloody death. Why?’ Shredder asked.
‘My guess is that he must be Vargen. What better way to hide your true identity?’ Gibbs murmured, and lifted the binoculars back up to his eyes.
Down on the street, puffs of concrete exploded on the wall near René’s position, and the man next to him fell forward and lay motionless. Gibbs could see all the men dive forward and hit the floor. Something bothered him for a second then it dawned on him, he didn’t hear any gunshots from his men downstairs. Who was firing at René and the resistance?
A few minutes later, a wounded Smithy entered the room from the floor below. ‘Boss, something strange is happening out there, we have red lasers, tracking in and around the room downstairs. They nicked my bloody shoulder.’
‘You okay?’ Gibbs asked.
‘Yip, it’s only a flesh wound. They seem to be firing from the opposite side to the roadblock,’ he replied.
‘What, from the western side of the road?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘René is on the move, boss,’ Shredder shouted, letting rip with a volley of bullets.
• • •
The shadows grew longer across the square as they neared dusk with only the occasional burst of gunfire being heard around the town hall. Gibbs went downstairs to check on his men and bumped into Killey, who was sitting on the floor in front of a medic’s bag, nursing a few injuries.
‘What the hell happened to you?’ Gibbs
asked.
‘Came off the damn bike and then had to scurry around like a fucking rat while they took pot shots at me,’ Killey said, grinning from ear to ear.
‘Get patched up quickly because once it gets dark, I want you to take the night vision kit and have a scout around. I suspect we have two different enemy groups out there, and both seem to want a piece of us.’
Chapter 47
Blonie, Poland - 2028
Killey had been gone for thirty minutes when Gibbs checked his watch again, pacing around the town hall lobby. With darkness upon them, getting intelligence from outside would help.
‘You look a bit worried, boss,’ Shredder said, snapping Gibbs back from his thoughts.
‘No, just waiting for our friendly night-crawler to return from having a snoop behind enemy lines.’
‘Ah! Well, you know how much he loves all that cloak and dagger shit. He’ll get the goods, he always does,’ Shredder said.
Gibbs nodded. ‘What’s happening with your boys?’
‘Everyone is settled and ready for the night ahead. We’ll keep scoping the street for movement.’
‘I heard a long volley of gunfire about twenty minutes ago while I was talking to the professor. Anything serious?’
‘We just went out to get the rest of the kit from the trucks. The darkness created from the lean-to over the front door helped keep us in the shadows a little, so we had no casualties.’
‘It probably helped Killey slip out the back too. Get grub into you and your men. It might be a long night.’
Gibbs walked into the main hall, crouched low and shuffled over to his men by the windows. He smiled at them and gave them a thumbs up, before hustling across the floor and into one of the banqueting rooms. Everyone seemed relaxed in the lull of activity.
He was about to check in with the research team when his radio crackled to life. ‘Alpha one, this is Kilo one, come in, over.’
‘Copy Kilo one. Go ahead, over.’
‘I’m at the back door and have a present for you, Alpha one. Meet me down in the kitchen.’
Gibbs ran to the stairs that spiralled down to the back of the building. When he got there, Killey was already standing in the kitchen with someone sitting on a kitchen chair, his back to the advancing Gibbs.
Gibbs slowed up and caught a glimpse of the red epaulettes on the shoulders of the man’s uniform. He looked twice at the bird-like insignia but recognised it immediately.
‘I expected you to be out a lot longer,’ he said to Killey.
‘Didn’t get far before I found our friend here nosing about. Thought you might want to have a little chat with him,’ Killey said. The man’s lip and eyebrow were bleeding, and he looked a little dazed.
‘Put up a bit of a fight, did he?’
Killey smiled. ‘Resisting arrest, sir. He’s a little stunned from head-butting my fist.’
Gibbs had seen the man on a few occasions in the Phoenix Council building in London, and he now knew why his instinct had been gnawing at him for the last few hours. The big German was involved.
• • •
A frustrated Chilemba sat with his back to the wall reloaded box magazines with rounds.
‘What are our orders now?’ he asked René, who was sat down on the floor next to him.
‘There seems to be another group of men shooting from the west. They have high-powered silenced rifles and are firing on both us and at the town hall,’ René said. ‘I don’t know who they are. Vargen is trying to find out.’
‘As it is dark outside, maybe I should go out the back and have a look around out there. I can try and get a look at the new group of men and also make my way around to the town hall to see if there are any other ways to get in. If I could get in and hide somewhere, I can open the doors from the inside at an agreed time and let our men in. Then we could fight our way to the scientists,’ Chilemba said.
‘Let me speak to Vargen and pass on your suggestion,’ René said, slipping the satphone off his belt.
René called Vargen and laid out Chilemba’s plan of attack. Vargen must have been keen to discuss the plan as René became quite animated, describing the strength of the unknown group of men to their right.
‘Okay, Chilemba. Vargen has given you the go-ahead to have a look around. Be warned, though, the men out there are not resistance fighters, so Vargen thinks they could be working for the GGC.’
Chilemba nodded.
• • •
Gibbs sat on an old wooden chair in front of the GGC corporal. The man with black hair glared back at Gibbs, clenching his square jaw as he tried to blink his eyes. One was swelling rapidly from Killey’s punches, and blood dripped down the front of his shirt from a torn lip.
‘I understand that Markus wouldn’t be happy if you divulge all the details of the operation, but I’m curious to know what brought you here since you’re supposed to be stationed in Givet. Plus, why the fuck you are firing at us. We are on the same bloody side, here,’ Gibbs said.
‘It would seem that certain parties in the Phoenix Council believe that you are no longer part of our team,’ the soldier said, a blank stare on his face.
‘What? Where did they get that bloody idea from? We are here on a mission for the GGC,’ Gibbs said.
‘All I heard was they believe that you know who the leader of the resistance is and that you are working for him. They also said that you met him in Paris and that you are responsible for the death of Deputy Minister Anderson,’ the man said.
Gibbs swung his fist instinctively and flattened both man and chair, a loud crash reverberating in the kitchen, as they hit the floor. He swallowed hard.
‘What the fuck did you say?’ he said, standing over the man who was spluttering, blood flowing from his lip and bitten tongue.
‘That you know the…’ The full force of Gibbs’s right fist hit him straight in the face. The last thing he saw before blacking out was the Guard captain being dragged away by two of his men.
Gibbs struggled against Killey and Smithy as they hauled him from the room.
‘Fucking let me go.’
‘Not until you calm down, boss. No point in killing the bloody messenger,’ Killey said, pinning Gibbs against the wall.
Gibbs struggled for a little longer then stopped, the rage subsiding. ‘Okay, okay. You can let me go. I’m fine.’
Killey let Gibbs go, but he moved towards the kitchen door ahead of his boss and blocked the doorway. ‘Why don’t I continue interrogating him?’
Gibbs nodded. ‘I’ll be upstairs with the professor.’
Fifteen minutes later Killey walked into the lobby area and over to Gibbs, who was sitting talking to one of his team. ‘Boss, can I have a minute in private?’ Killey said.
‘What other information did you get from him?’ Gibbs said once they were out of earshot of the professor’s team.
‘Markus has been given two missions, the first is to bring you in for interrogation so they can try and identify Vargen. The second is to make sure the professor and his research get to London. No one else has to survive.’
Gibbs was about to comment when gunfire broke out again outside.
‘Take your positions,’ Gibbs shouted.
Shredder positioned himself near one of the cracked windows with his night vision binoculars. ‘Boss, it looks like Markus’s men are making a move up the street. They are also taking fire from the resistance in the east.’
‘Let’s stay out of it for a moment, let them fight it out for a while,’ Gibbs said.
One of Gibbs’s men walked in and handed him his satphone. ‘It’s for you, boss.’
‘Gibbs,’ he said.
‘Hello, Gibbs,’ said an all too familiar Germanic accent.
‘Schmitty. Sadly, it’s never a pleasure to hear your voice. How is Givet treating you?’
‘Drop the act, arsehole. You have one of my men, and I want him released, immediately.’
‘Straight to the point, as usual, that’s about the on
ly thing I do like about you, mate. And no, I won’t release him. He has only just started to sing, and I’m sure that he has a lot more to tell me,’ Gibbs said.
‘Let him go so that you and I can talk, man to man.’
‘I already know what both your missions are, Markus, and you will fail in both,‘ Gibbs said.
‘Give yourself up now, and the civilians will not die, Gibbs. You only have one chance.’
‘Get fucked, Schmitty. Why don’t you come over here and try to get me yourself so that I can give you another hiding?’ Gibbs said and hung up.
Chapter 48
Blonie, Poland - 2028
From the upstairs window, Gibbs could see the odd rifle burst in the darkness from the west side of the street as Markus’s team engaged with the resistance in the east. Someone in the resistance replied with tracer rounds that created bright yellow streaks across the front of the town hall.
‘Killey, go downstairs and round up half of the guard. Send them up to me,’ Gibbs said.
‘Are we expecting a push?’ Killey asked.
‘Yes. Markus is no doubt going to try and get to the professor. Up here we can see them coming,’ Gibbs replied.
‘Boss?’ Gibbs looked over to Shredder, who continued to scan the street with the night vision binoculars. ‘Our German friend has started to push forward quite quickly. He must be desperate to get at you because he hasn’t noticed that he is being outflanked and will shortly be surrounded. I can see a few of the resistance men running along that rooftop opposite us, and they have just moved in behind him.’
‘How many men does he have?’ Gibbs asked.
‘I’d counted around twenty, although another two have just been hit.’
‘Perhaps I can add to that casualty list,’ Killey said, as he came through the door, carrying his sniper rifle.
‘Set up next to me, Killey, and do me a favour, leave Markus for now. I want him for myself,’ Gibbs said.
‘You’re the boss,’ Killey said as he began setting up his rifle below the window.
• • •
Chilemba lay hidden under a row of bushes. He’d crawled slowly towards a side entrance of the town hall under darkness and was now within striking distance. The side door of the town hall which was directly opposite him was being guarded by two GGC men, who were heavily armed and constantly scanned the alley for the enemy. They had no idea that he was so close. Chilemba smiled.
The Journey of Kyle Gibbs Box Set Page 50