by Chris Ryan
The door opened out into a brightly lit garage the size of a school gymnasium. Fluorescent light tubes hung from the high bay ceiling. The concrete floor was coated in some kind of hard-wearing resin and painted in alternate thick bands of red, grey and white. At the rear of the building, thirty metres away, a metal staircase led up to the dispatch room on the first floor.
Bald took the left side of the floor while Porter surged forward, clearing the area ahead, Lyden and Rowe following close behind. The four of them arcing their sights from side to side, searching for targets, moving with controlled aggression. Just the way they had trained during endless exercises at the Regiment Killing House.
Bald spotted the fire tender at his nine o’clock. A smaller second firefighting vehicle was parked up in the space to the right of the tender, a modified pickup truck. Some kind of rapid intervention vehicle. There was a load of firefighting equipment stacked against the wall behind the tender. Bald saw free-standing lockers with spare uniforms and gloves and helmets. He saw coiled hoses and oxygen tanks, bolt cutters and ventilation units.
In the middle of the garage, he saw two figures writhing on the ground.
They were both decked out in dark-blue flame-retardant trousers and matching jackets, with hi-vis bands around the ankles and sleeves, utility belts strapped around their chests. The guy on the left was in his late thirties or early forties, with hair the colour of urine and eyes like lumps of charcoal. The guy on the right was younger and skinnier, with a chinstrap beard. Both of them were thrashing about on their backs as the Malinoises tore into them. One of the dogs had its jaws clamped around the forearm of the guy with the piss-coloured hair. The other Malinois had sunk its teeth into Chinstrap’s ankle, wrenching its head this way and that as it tore into his flesh. Chinstrap kicked out wildly as the dog bit into him with renewed vigour, drawing another agonised scream from its victim.
Bald swept further into the room.
He couldn’t see the third firefighter.
Then he looked across to the rear of the garage.
The third firefighter was twenty-five metres away. A squat, stocky guy, round-faced, with a jowly jawline and thinning dark hair.
He was reaching for the portable radio clipped to his utility belt.
Shit, thought Bald. Fucker’s going to alert the cops.
All kinds of implications rattled through his mind.
The local police station is ten miles away.
Response time is anything between nine and twelve minutes.
The firefighter unclipped the radio. Another second or two, and he’d sound the alarm with the local plod.
Bald arced across his rifle, thought about nailing the firefighter. A shot to the head. Realised he couldn’t. The sound of the rifle discharge. The other maintenance staff would hear. The guard, too.
Then he saw Porter sprint into view in a burst of movement, charging forward with surprising speed for a guy in his fifties. The months of clean living, paying off. Porter caught up with the firefighter before the latter could depress the Push-to-Talk button, reversing the L119A2 rifle in his grip and thrusting out at him with the buttstock, slamming the stock into the base of the firefighter’s spine. The guy made a grunting sound in the back of his throat as he tumbled and fell backwards, the radio skimming across the smooth floor.
Porter jabbed the round-faced guy again in the guts, drawing another howl of pain. He took a knee beside the firefighter, flipped him on to his back. Snatched out a pair of plasticuffs from his rear trouser pocket and cinched the guy’s hands tightly behind his back.
Across the garage floor, Chinstrap and the guy with the piss-coloured hair continued to scream.
Porter grabbed the firefighter by the scruff of his collar and hauled the guy to his feet. Looked up. Bald nodded at him. One Blade to another, appreciating their handiwork.
‘Stick him in there,’ Bald said, cocking a thumb at the office situated at the rear of the garage. ‘I’ll grab the others.’
‘Roger that.’
Porter barked something at the round-faced guy, drag-walked him towards the office. Bald wheeled away and hastened over to Lyden and Rowe. They had wrestled the Malinoises free from the other two firefighters. The dogs stood obediently beside their trainers, panting heavily, tongues hanging out of teeth-bared mouths while the operators plasticuffed Chinstrap and his mate. Lyden rose to his feet and swung round to face Bald, grinning.
‘Told you these beauties would get the job done,’ he said.
Bald grunted a reply. But he was impressed with the dogs. These animals are the business, he thought to himself. The guy with the urine-coloured hair was moaning softly on the floor, blood oozing out of a deep wound to his forearm. He had bite marks on both hands, scratches to his face. The dog had done a real number on him. More efficient than chucking a couple of flashbangs into the room. That was for fucking sure.
‘Stop you this,’ the fireman moaned in broken English. ‘Stop you, please!’
‘Shut the fuck up!’ Lyden growled.
Bald glanced down at his G-Shock. 21.51 hours.
Four minutes until the jet landed.
Seconds ticking away.
He nodded at Lyden and said, ‘Dump these idiots in the office with the other fat fuck. Lock them inside. And make sure they haven’t got access to any comms. Then we’re heading out on the tender.’
They moved quickly. Rowe tended to the Malinoises while Porter, Lyden and Bald shoved the three firefighters into the downstairs office, a sparsely furnished room as small as a broom cupboard. They bound the prisoners’ ankles together with plastic cable ties and stuffed dirty rags from a workbench into their mouths, gagging them. Snatched their portable radios from their belts, padded them down and took their mobile phones too. Locked the door, tossed the key aside. Hastened across the garage floor, fetched the spare jackets from the free-standing locker set against the far wall and put them on over their shirts and bulletproof vests. Lyden and Rowe reclipped the leashes to the Malinoises’ collars. Then they fetched up their weapons and mounted the steps to the tender.
The inside of the cabin was spacious. There were two seats in the front row, with three seats behind on a raised platform, giving the passengers greater visibility through the shatterproof windscreen. Lyden and Rowe took up the seats to the rear, with the Malinoises resting their paws on the floor beside them. Porter slid behind the wheel, Bald climbing in after him and taking the front passenger seat. He turned to Porter.
‘Get us moving. Let’s fucking do this.’
Porter flipped the ignition switch, shifted the transmission into Neutral and depressed the start button. The engine blatted and spluttered into life. He released the parking brake, flicked on the headlights and upshifted into Drive. The tender was an automatic, like most firefighting vehicles. He applied the gas gently at first, gauging the speed and handling.
Sixty seconds to go until the jet landed.
Porter steered the tender out of the fire station, spun the wheel to the left and drove south towards the maintenance hangars, the engine roaring. He passed the hangars and made a right turn, following the narrow road west towards the tarmac stand. Bald, Lyden and Rowe stayed silent, scanning the runway and surrounding buildings, rifles propped against their legs. The Malinoises panting in the back seat.
After five hundred metres they reached the edge of the tarmac stand and Bald threw up his hand. ‘Stop here. This’ll do.’
Porter hit the brakes and pulled up on the eastern fringe of the stand. They came to a halt in a darkened area, far beyond the bank of security lights near the control tower to the south. The fire tender facing west across the skid-marked tarmac. Porter applied the parking brake and killed the headlights, switching off the engine.
Further away to the west, six hundred metres away, Bald glimpsed the main aircraft hangars, linked to the tarmac stand by another tyre-streaked road. To the south he could see the single-lane road leading past the control tower and the car park towards
the front gate, some four hundred metres away. The runway at their three o’clock, parallel to the stand. Bald looked south, scanned the dense blackness beyond the main gate, but there was no sign of any approaching motors.
No sign of the private jet, either.
He checked the time again: 21.56 hours.
‘Where the fuck is this thing?’ he said.
Ten seconds later, he saw the lights.
THIRTY-FOUR
The Embraer Phenom 300 came in from the west, just as Lyden had predicted. The aircraft was lit up like a Christmas tree. Bald saw a bunch of lights on the wings and underside of the fuselage, along with several smaller anti-collision lights on the wingtips. The lights grew bigger, pulsing and bursting in the grainy darkness. Then came the turbine roar of the jet engines as the Phenom made its final approach to the runway.
Movement in the back of the cabin. Rummaging noises. Bald twisted round in his seat, saw Lyden removing the digital camera from the pouch on the front of his ballistic vest. He connected the camera to the transponder he was wearing, took the other end of the coaxial cable and inserted it into the socket on the side of the camera.
Bald pointed with his eyes at the camera and said, ‘What’s that thing for?’
‘Strickland wants eyes on whoever the target is meeting with,’ Lyden said. ‘This gadget will feed back any images we capture to the ops room. They’ll see what we can see.’
‘How long will that take?’
‘Fraction of a second. Signal bounces off a satellite, pings it straight to Vauxhall. Magic.’ Lyden saw the sceptical look on Bald’s face and smiled. ‘This shit is standard now. Everything’s real-time these days.’
Bald sighed through his nostrils. ‘Remind me never to go for a pint with you fellas.’
‘Couldn’t keep up with us anyway.’
‘I’m from Dundee. Drinking is practically the number-one sport up there. I could drink you two amateurs under the table.’
Lyden half-grinned. ‘Is that a challenge?’
‘Just stating the facts.’ Bald gestured to the jet. ‘Let’s nobble the Russians first. Then we’ll see who’s really hard.’
He looked ahead again as the Phenom glided towards the runway. Several seconds later the jet splashed down on the tarmac in a cacophony of screeching rubber and whining engines. The aircraft surged on for half a kilometre, the wind acting as a powerful natural brake against ten thousand pounds of metal hurtling along the ground, until it finally slowed to taxiing speed five hundred metres from the eastern end of the runway. As Bald and the others looked on the jet rumbled further along, the eerie blare of the engines filling the night air before it came gracefully round and rolled down the eastern taxiway down to the tarmac stand. The Phenom swept into the stand and turned again, the cockpit swinging towards the west, away from the fire tender. Away from Bald and Porter and the two younger operators in the back seats.
Seconds passed.
The Phenom eased to a halt.
Engine reduced to a faint mechanical hum.
Bald glanced at the road leading to the main gate, four hundred metres to the south.
Darkness.
Still no sign of the Russians.
Porter turned to the guys in the back seat and said, ‘What’s the plan once the Russians arrive?’
‘We’ll get a shot of the person the target is meeting with, soon as they get off the jet,’ Lyden said. ‘Bang it across to the ops room and wait for a positive ID. Once we get the green light to attack, we’ll bust out of the tender and send in the dogs. They’ll attack the two nearest targets. That should buy us enough time to put the drop on the rest of the heavies and grab Volkov. Then we’ll leg it on to the Phenom.’
‘Assuming that meeting happens on the tarmac,’ Porter said. ‘What if they meet on the plane?’
Bald shook his head. ‘Volkov is an ex-spook. He might be working with the Russians, but he’ll trust them about as far as he can piss. Goes with the territory, when you’re in that line of work. If he’s expecting to meet someone, he won’t set foot on that jet until he’s laid eyes on them.’
‘Jock’s right,’ Porter added. ‘Lansbury said something similar. Reckoned Volkov insisted on getting his reward before getting on the jet.’
A wave of tiredness settled like fog behind Bald’s sockets. He rubbed his eyes and said, ‘Volkov isn’t the real problem. It’s the Russians. There’s gonna be six of them and four of us. At least.’
Rowe, stroking the head of the dog beside him, said, ‘We’ve got the Malinoises. They’ll take care of a couple of them. Evens things up.’
Bald grunted. ‘Even so, we’re going to be exposed,’ he said. ‘Soon as we unleash them hounds, we’ll only have a few seconds to close on the Russians before they realise what’s going on. And we’ll be crossing open ground with no fucking cover.’
Porter said, ‘Nothing we can do about that. We’re a hundred metres away. We can’t get closer than this without looking suspicious.’
‘Then we’ll have to move forward in pairs,’ Bald said. ‘Fire and move. Keep the other lot pinned down.’ He turned in his seat, nodded at Lyden and Rowe. ‘You two will work as a team. Me and Porter will be the second team. Clobber them from different angles. Soon as the first shots are fired, we’ll need to keep putting bursts down on the fuckers. Whatever you do, make sure there’s no lulls in the fire. The second we stop shooting, them Russians will fucking plug us.’
‘We know what to do,’ Lyden said. ‘Just focus on your own performance.’
Bald’s expression tautened. ‘Me and Porter were doing this shit while you two were still watching Teletubbies. We’ll get the job done.’
He faced forward, looked down at his watch: 21.59 hours.
Almost time.
He caught a sudden glimmer of movement at his twelve o’clock and swung his gaze back to the Phenom, a hundred metres downstream from the fire tender. Bald was looking at the tail end of the aircraft, with the cockpit pointing west towards the main hangars. The Phenom was around fifteen metres long, with a similar wingspan. A small business jet. Cabin space for seven or eight passengers, probably. On the left side of the fuselage the clamshell door had sucked open and a small set of airstairs unfolded from inside the door frame, extending down to the tarmac. Like a drawbridge being lowered over a moat.
No one disembarked.
Twenty seconds later, Porter nudged Bald and pointed to the south. ‘Jock! Over there.’
Straining his eyes, Bald gazed in the direction his mucker had indicated. At first, he could see nothing except the deserted road and the blackness of the countryside beyond. Then he focused again and saw them. Two pairs of headlamps, beams sweeping through the front gate as they scudded north on the approach road. At a distance of four hundred metres, the vehicles were too far away to identify. Bald watched them as they bowled on past the car park and the control tower, motoring along at a steady clip, not too fast, not too slow, until they hit the floodlit area at the southern end of the tarmac stand.
‘That’s them,’ Bald said. ‘That’s fucking them.’
The two Lexus 570 SUVs rolled across the stand, heading towards the Phenom in a line formation. Front SUV leading the way, the backup vehicle four or five metres behind. They were the same colour as the two wagons Bald and Porter had seen racing away from Koman Castle earlier that night. Same licence plates. Bald traced their movement for a few beats before he turned to face the guys in the back seats.
‘Get that thing ready,’ he said, cocking his head at the digital camera. Lyden had plugged his boom mic and earpiece into another socket on the side of the transponder, allowing him to communicate directly to the ops room in London on a secure channel.
Lyden leaned forward in his seat, raised the camera viewfinder to his eyes and trained the lens on the airstairs. Bald looked ahead again, focused on the two Lexus 570s as they rumbled across the stand. The windows on both SUVs were green tinted. Which told Bald that the vehicles were armour plate
d. Bullet-resistant glass and bodywork, capable of stopping a spray of 7.62mm rounds or a couple of hand grenades. Whatever we do, thought Bald, we can’t let the Russians retreat behind the wagons. Once they’re behind cover, they’ll be able to put down rounds on us.
‘Which car is the target in?’ asked Lyden.
Bald thought back to the castle. Three hours earlier. A lifetime ago.
‘Lead vehicle,’ he said. ‘The backup team is in the second wagon. Three guys plus the driver. One guy in the front with the driver and the target in the back seat.’
He felt his muscles automatically tense as the cars neared the jet.
This is it. We’re about to get into a firefight with the FSB.
The SUVs slowed to a fast crawl and veered sharply to the left, pulling up parallel with the Phenom cockpit, with the second Lexus stopping a couple of metres further back, a metre or so ahead of the jet’s left wingtip. The wagons were both parked at a forty-five-degree angle, their front bumpers pointed towards the nose of the plane.
A moment later, three heavies stepped out of the rear Lexus. Two guys from the back seats and a third from the front passenger side. The same three guys Bald had seen climbing into the wagon back at Koman Castle. Two of them could have been twins. Brick shithouses, decked out in a matching uniform of Tactical 5.11 trousers, shirts and jackets.
The third man was older than the Shithouse Twins. Early fifties, perhaps. Hard to tell from a hundred metres away. He was shorter than the twins, short and stocky, with a prominent widow’s peak.
All three heavies had their shoulder-slung sub-machine guns half-concealed beneath their outerwear. They would be carrying secondary weapons as well, Bald figured. Nine-milli pistols, within easy reach in case they suffered a stoppage or ran out of ammo with their longs.
The Shithouse Twins and Widow’s Peak spread out in a loose semicircle next to the rear Lexus. Hands resting on the buttstocks of their weapons, eyes casually scanning the tarmac stand. None of them paid much attention to the fire tender a hundred metres to the east. Nothing unusual about a tender waiting on standby. Normal operating procedure at airports around the world.