“I’m going to drill the lock” whispered Oz into the mic of his PRR, “come in closer and get in like shit off a shovel when I’m done.”
“Roger, entry as planned” I replied. I pulled the M84 stun grenade from my chest rig and clutched it tightly. There was a technical term for the extreme disorientation an M84 going off causes, but as Andy preferred to say, it just really fucks you up.
Oz crouched down and slipped the bit of a small power drill into the lock. Turov stood behind him. I walked slowly over to the door and stood opposite, MP5 slung across my chest.
The screech of the drill ripped through the night-time silence. Oz drilled out the lock and pushed the door open, quickly bringing his MP5 to bear. I pulled the pin on the stun grenade and tossed it as far into the corridor as I could. With no neighbours for miles, I was gambling that one bang contained inside a building would go unnoticed, unlike an exchange of automatic weapon fire.
I covered my ears and waited, anticipation not dulling the boom of the M84 detonating. The million-candlelight flash flared in my peripheral vision. I ducked into the doorway, weapon first and darted in. The corridor smelt of smoke and gunpowder, a flight of stairs to my left and a doorway straight ahead leading towards the back of the farmhouse where the extension was located.
“Go” I barked, covering the stairway.
Oz passed me, MP5 scanning the corridor like an extension of his body.
Tchk! Tchk! went a suppressed MP5 behind me, the distinctive metallic snap of the bolt. I felt the rounds whistle past my ear.
“Clear!” said Turov. In front of me I saw a body sprawled in the doorway. I hadn’t even seen him. Oz stepped over the corpse, which was clad only in tracksuit trousers, and into the next room. Oz took the left side, I took the right. It was a large kitchen. I saw movement in the corner of the room and I fired two sense-of-direction shots. A window shattered as it was struck by a bullet, and I heard a grunt.
The buzz-saw stammer of an automatic weapon filled my ears, the room suddenly full of incoming rounds, plasterboard and debris. We all instinctively ducked, Oz firing as he hugged the floor. Someone on the other side of the thin partition wall had fired straight through it, leaving a crazy trail of ragged bullet holes. It was still pitch black.
“I’m hit,” coughed Oz.
I thumbed the MP5 onto three-round bursts and opened fire, working backwards to mirror the bullet holes in the wall. Turov, seeing what I was doing, nodded and fired on automatic. Her stream of bullets joined mine as they raked across the wall. The only sounds were the bolts of our weapons, spent shell casings hitting the floor and the thud of rounds splintering flimsy MDF like tissue paper. I ejected the empty magazine and slid a fresh one in.
The intensity of return fire suggested multiple assailants, and through the gashes in the ruined wall I could see muzzle flashes. The men were aiming high, their fire unfocussed. This wasn’t the work of professionals.
I didn’t see the guy who barrelled into me, knocking me to the ground. I tried to twist to bring my SMG around, but a bony fist crashed into my face, a hand scrabbling at the MP5. Turov was grunting with effort as she, too wrestled with a dark shape. Again I heard the familiar hiss of a suppressed weapon and my attacker shuddered. I pulled my pistol, stuffed it against his ribs pulled the trigger twice. Rolling off of the body of an athletic, Asiatic-looking man I saw Turov pinned to the ground by a bigger combatant, the dull gleam of a combat knife in his grip. I brought my Walther up and fired, catching the knifeman in the back of the head. His body crashed forwards on top of the SVR officer.
The automatic fire stopped, and I heard swearing in Russian and the metallic scrape of magazines being taken out of weapons.
“Alisa?” I hissed.
“It’s OK,” she whispered.
Readying my SMG, I crawled towards the door for a better look, pulling down my NVGs. Two semi-clothed muscle-men were huddled in the darkness, behind a pile of crazily upturned furniture. They were reloading their AK assault rifles and whispering in low voices. In front of them was a body, a neat trail of red bullet wounds stitched across his torso.
“Hands up!” I bellowed in Russian.
One of the men spun towards me, blinking in the dark. His hand snatched at the cocking lever on his AK. I fired a three round bust, the bullets finding their mark. He flopped forward, the wall behind him painted with gore.
“HANDS UP, YOU FUCKING IDIOT” I bawled.
The second guy dropped his AK, looking around in the darkness.
I stood up and rushed him, smashing his jaw with the butt of my SMG and kicking his rifle across the floor “ROOM CLEAR! How is Oz?” I said. The Russian curled into a groaning ball of muscle as I aimed my weapon at his head.
I heard Alisa’s voice. “He’s OK: it’s an in-and-out in his upper arm.”
“No, I’m not fucking OK” coughed the ex-SBS man, “I’ll never play the violin again.”
“That bastard who jumped us actually stabbed me” she laughed, “thanks for the body armour!” I could see her motioning to her mid-riff, her white camouflage coveralls slashed open.
I switched on a light, revealing the carnage. Blood-streaked furniture, weapons and bodies littered the corridor and sitting room. I could see the remnants of a heavy drinking session: empty vodka bottles, opened bags of white powder, sleeves of boot-legged cigarettes and a pile of porno DVDs. The wide-screen TV, big enough for a small cinema, was splintered with bullet holes.
I keyed the mic of my PRR. “Andy, what did that sound like?”
“World War fucking Three” he groaned, “they’d have heard that in Belgium.”
“We’re good, will exfil in five.”
“Make it two” he replied.
“You” I barked in Russian at the muscle-man, who glaring at me as he spat out a tooth, “where are the FSB men? The Spetzgruppa?”
He looked around at the corpses, then at the nearest weapon.
“Don’t even think about it” I said quietly, pressing the muzzle of my SMG against his forehead “where are they?”
Turov and Oz joined me. Oz’s face was screwed up in pain. He was clutching a field dressing against his bloody arm, pieces of gristle and glistening muscle bulging from the wound. The sleeve of his white coverall was soaked red. And his DNA was now all over the plot.
“Tell him what he wants to know, idiot” snarled Alisa, her SMG pointed at the Russian gangster.
“They have gone” he croaked, blood running down his chin, “on their fucking mission, like good soldier boys.”
“Where?” I said.
“I don’t know, they don’t tell me. I just babysit their stuff. The commander’s room is upstairs, they are coming back, tomorrow or maybe the day after. Then they go home.”
“When did they leave?” I said.
“This morning” he said, “after breakfast.”
Alisa pointed with her SMG “Who are you?”
“Me? Nobody. I work for Misha, for his security team. We were looking after the boys for him, that’s all.”
“Then you have failed.” Alisa stepped back and shot him with a three round burst to the chest, the Russian collapsing like a sack of meat. “We know what we need to know” she spat, “I will search their rooms.”
“We don’t have time” I said, “they’ve gone to find Van Basten, right?”
“Wait here” she replied, hurrying out of the room and up the stairs.
“We’ve gotta go,” groaned Oz. His face was pale and shiny with sweat.
I was worried he’d go into shock. I pulled another field dressing from my pocket and un-wrapped it, placing it gently over the first. Then I passed him an inhaler dose of nasal Ketamine, a better and faster-painkiller than morphine.
“Fuck” whistled Oz, “that hurts.” He took the plastic bottle and took a sniff.
“Never been shot before?” I chided.
“Only the once, in the ’Stan,” he winced.
“Where?”
Oz rol
led his eyes, “Helmand, you daft bastard.”
“No, where on your body?” I said, wanting to keep him talking.
Oz staggered as he tried not to laugh. “In my arse, Terry Taliban plinked me in the jacksie with a 5.45 round from three hundred metres. I was taking a dump at the time.”
Turov skipped down the stairs, her SMG slung and a laptop computer cradled in her arms. “I have also found mobile telephones and a map. They were hidden inside a mattress. The map is a military one of Wiltshire.”
I put Oz’s arm around my shoulder and helped him towards the door, “great, but we need to think about this place, it’s a forensic nightmare.”
Then I heard sirens.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“I can see blue lights heading north” said Andy calmly over our PRR net, “one cop car.” From his hide he could see the main road in either direction. “It’s OK, he’s heading the wrong way, but I expect him to turn around when he gets to the next farm.”
“Get out of there,” I ordered.
“With respect, Captain, no” he replied, “I’ve got some tricks in the wagon, plus that plot needs cleaning up.”
Alisa helped me with Oz as we hobbled up the drive towards the car. I’d covered his arm with a carrier bag I’d found in the kitchen so his blood wouldn’t drip in the snow, leaving more DNA for the cops. I heard the whine of Andy’s van as its wheels spun in the frozen snow, the Transit pulling up next to us.
“Get in” panted Andy from the driver’s seat, “I’ll be one minute.”
“Oz, Alisa, in the van” I said, “I’ll get the car and meet you at Oz’s place. Andy can come with me. Go!”
Oz nodded and fell gratefully into the side door of the van. I slid it shut and tapped on it. Alisa climbed in the driver’s seat and gunned the engine.
“We don’t shoot cops, OK?” I said to the SVR officer “it’s one of our rules.”
“OK” she laughed, “is there a rule about shooting the engine blocks out of their cars?”
“No, that’s allowed.”
“Good.” She fast-reversed the van back up the drive, the Transit sliding and bumping on the icy track. Then she was gone.
“Right” said Andy, shrugging an old-fashioned canvas rucksack off his back. He pulled out three matt green canisters duct-taped together with plastic soda bottles. Andy grinned. “My special cleaning kit: two M14 incendiary grenades, one white phosphorous grenade and two litres of four-star petrol.”
We jogged across the farmyard and into the shattered kitchen. “This is where it kicked off” I said, “hurry.”
Andy took in the bodies, weapons and blood-splashes. With a bottle of petrol in each hand he carefully ran a trail through both rooms. He paid special attention to the curtains and furniture, putting the bottles back in his rucksack when he was finished. “Let’s go!”
We dashed out of the door as he pulled the pin on the bundle of phosphorous and incendiary grenades. “Fire in the hole!” he hollered, tossing them into the kitchen, “I’ve always wanted to say that.”
There was a dull thump as the grenades and petrol ignited, then the smoky, fizzing flash of the white phosphorous. Flames licked out of the door, and a window popped. Black Hall Farm, without urgent fire brigade attention, would be a smoking ruin in twenty minutes.
We reached my Volvo, tucked in the lay-by, as the police car careered towards the farm track. It slowed down as the driver spotted me, the police turret lights washing us with angry blue light.
“Get that fucker started” said Andy, pointing at the Volvo. He shouldered the M6 rifle and fired a burst along the radiator and bonnet of the marked police Ford. It groaned to a halt, the cop scrabbling at his radio. Andy shot out the tyres nearest us, two rounds in each. “Out of the car!” barked Andy, smoke curling from the barrel of the M6, “on your belly! NOW! Look away from me!”
The startled policeman, a young guy in his early twenties, complied immediately. Andy ripped the Airwave radio from the cop’s body-armour and tossed it into the snow-topped blackthorns running along the drive. “Sorry, mate, about your car” he said.
“Fuck off,” grunted the cop.
I pulled forward, Andy jumping in the front of the car. I motored away, throwing the Volvo right and fish-tailing along the icy main road. I was confident that this early in the morning in rural Essex there wouldn’t be too many cop cars about, but I was worried about being picked up by their helicopter. There’s no escaping police helis in a rural area.
“I love this job” dead-panned Andy, “I really feel like I’m contributing to society in a special way.”
“Really?” I replied, “and there was me thinking it was because you’re a pyromaniac with a firearms fetish.”
I drove along lonely back-roads, skirting around Southminster then north towards Maldon. In the distance I saw a heli, the tell-tale searchlight making it look like a UFO as it swept towards the farm. Andy pulled a ski jacket over his winter camouflage and helped me wriggle out of mine as I drove. We cleaned up with wet-wipes, Andy stashing our weapons and kit in a large vinyl ski-bag. By then I was on the back roads that ran northeast to Colchester, then onto the main road to Harwich. Cop cars sped past us in the other direction, sirens howling.
“That was too close for my liking” said Andy, offering me coffee from his flask, “reckon there’ll be a roadblock?”
“Possibly” I nodded, “get on the phone to Harry. Tell him Oz took one in the arm.”
Andy took the offered satellite phone and punched in the number. Harry answered on the third ring. I tucked my Walther under my thigh, just in case.
Harry’s conversation with Andy was short, “Harry says to send Oz to an RV and he’ll send the doctor, but he’s out of the game: they’ll take him abroad for treatment.”
The Firm had a tame trauma doctor. If operatives were injured he’d stabilise them, then the casualty was flown to a private hospital in Spain for treatment. That way we never appeared on any UK medical records. I don’t know what happened to our bodies if we didn’t make it, but I guessed it involved holding up flyovers or feeding pigs.
I slowed right down as ambulances and fire engines rushed by. Switching on the radio news, the reporter was already announcing ‘a major terrorist incident’ on the Essex coast. Another heli clattered overhead, then another. Andy and I looked at each other and said nothing for the rest of the journey.
At the cottage there was no sign of the van, but Alisa was waiting by the kitchen window and waved. We emptied our kit inside and went into the small sitting room, where a fire was blazing. Oz was sat on the sofa, sweaty and pale, arm elevated. Alisa had found our trauma kit and had an IV line in.
“Where’s the van?” I asked.
“I have parked it behind the cottage, out of view” said Turov, passing out mugs of steaming coffee, “what do we do about Oz?”
I explained that we had a doctor on standby. “You’re off to Spain, Oz” I said cheerily.
“Thank fuck for that” he groaned, “I could murder a Sangria.”
“Can I come too?” said Andy, “I’m suffering trauma after all that.”
“There is no time for jokes” said Alisa, “we must get to Van Basten – if he dies we will never find the location of his server.”
“It’s crawling with Old Bill out there” said Andy.
“She’s right,” I said, “the FSB team won’t hang about. For all we know, they might already be there.”
I pulled out my Blackberry and phoned Melissa Compton’s number.
“What time is it?” she groaned sleepily.
“It’s Cal Winter, where are Sergei and Pieter Van Basten right now?”
“We’re all down in Wiltshire, at Evan’s place.”
Wiltshire. Fuck.
“Near Salisbury Plain?” I said.
“Yes” she replied, “right next to it, actually.” I could hear Melissa starting to wake up, her voice clear, “We’re at Sir Evan Sands’ house. He’s Sergei’s business par
tner. Pieter’s living here while he waits for the appeal. Why, what’s wrong?”
“Tell Sergei you are all in danger, the FSB team are on their way, if they haven’t arrived already. Get the security team to lock the house down and get Aseyev to call me as soon as possible.”
“Got it” she said, “I’ll send you the address right now.”
I grabbed a pen, “good. Tell Sergei I’ll be there as soon as I can. Put Pieter somewhere safe, with a guard.”
“Why Pieter?”
“Because I think he’s the target, Melissa.”
I heard her gasp.
“Melissa, under no circumstances do you call the police.”
“Calling the police has never been on of Sergei’s priorities,” she said, and put the phone down.
I called Harry and explained the situation, “I need to be in Wiltshire ASAP.”
“This is going tits-up” he said sourly, “it’s not like I can summon a heli out of thin air.”
I sighed, “Sort out Oz. I don’t think he should be moved. We’ll head there in the car.”
“Sure” said my Handler, “I’ll send the medical team to Oz’s place, but keep me updated, I’ll bat off SIS when they phone up and ask what’s going on.” Harry put the phone down.
The next call I made was on the cheap throwaway phone the freelancing SIS officer, Marcus, had given me.
He picked up immediately. “I’m watching the news Calum” said Marcus brightly, “my but you’re a ruthless bastard!
“I need a heli” I barked, “else Pieter Van Basten is going to get slotted along with Sergei Belov. We missed the FSB team. If we don’t get down to Wiltshire then there’s no file.”
“OK, but if you didn’t get the FSB operators, who are the unfortunate bastards incinerated in this farm in Essex I’m watching on the BBC right now?”
“Russian gangsters: Misha Baburin’s boys, they were looking after the FSB unit.”
“Where are you?” said Marcus wearily, “because I’m about to take the biggest bloody risk of my career doing this.”
The Ninth Circle Page 14