by Chris Ryan
A pause.
‘All right,’ Scott says into the phone, and for the first time he sounds a little unsure of himself. ‘We’ll be there in half an hour . . . Yeah, all right, twenty minutes . . .’
Zak can barely move, but he doesn’t have a choice. He feels his captors pull him up into a sitting position. They rip off his jacket, and then his T-shirt, to reveal his torso and the listening equipment so carefully taped to it. After the kicking he’s received, Zak isn’t at all sure that the transmitter is still functioning. His captors aren’t taking that chance. They rip the duct tape sticking the wire to his body, and it feels to Zak as though it’s pulling his skin with it.
Once the transmitter is in their hands, they stamp on it, grinding the tiny device under their heels until it is clearly of no use to anyone.
‘Put your clothes back on, pig,’ Scott tells Zak. ‘You’re coming with us.’
‘Where to?’ Zak rasps.
An unpleasant sneer creeps its way onto Scott’s face. ‘To see Rasnovic,’ he says.
*
‘Anton Rasnovic. Wanted in his native Poland for three counts of murder, and two of attempted murder. Truth be told, the men he killed were the lucky ones.’ Gabs’s face was grim as she continued the briefing. ‘The two attempted murder charges relate to a pair of sisters. It’s not quite clear what they did to upset Rasnovic, but whatever it was, they paid a heavy price. There’s a basement in his house on the outskirts of Warsaw. The sisters were found hanging by their wrists from ropes attached to meat hooks in the ceiling. They’d been there for about forty-eight hours.’
‘About?’ Zak asked. Gabs was normally a lot more precise.
‘They couldn’t say. They were so traumatized by their experience that they suffered some kind of amnesia. It appears that he beat them very severely while they were hanging there. Their wounds were beginning to go septic. Any longer, and they’d have been beyond medical care.’
‘This Rasnovic character has a penchant for ropes,’ added Raf. ‘It’s a nasty way to go. So what we’re saying, Zak, is that you don’t want to end up in a situation where Rasnovic has time to get creative on you.’
‘No,’ Zak agreed. ‘I don’t think I do.’
*
They force him back into his clothes, hustle him down to the car and blindfold him again.
This time, Scott takes the seat next to him in the back, and for the duration of the journey, Zak can feel the butt of his captor’s Browning pressed against his raw, bruised ribs. He feels unreal. Weightless. He feels as if he is running on the hot fear in his gut. Images pass through his head. Horrific images. Women close to death, hanging from meat hooks. He tries once more to concentrate on the direction of the car, but he’s overcome by nausea and it’s impossible to know where he is.
This journey is shorter than the first. Fifteen minutes? Maybe twenty? Impossible to say through the pain. The car comes to a halt. His captors don’t bother removing the blindfold this time. They just manhandle him out of the vehicle. He feels himself being dragged down some steps. His shins bang against the cold stone. To take his mind off the pain, he counts each one. Fifteen steps, then a door at the bottom. He hears it open in front of him and slam shut behind him. A lock in the door. He’s alone.
Zak scrambles to remove his blindfold. He’s in some sort of cellar. There’s no electric light, but he can see a bit thanks to a ventilation hole by the ceiling. He listens carefully. No cars, no pedestrians. Wherever he is, it’s out of the way. He makes a quick calculation. Forty-minute car drive from Acton. Twenty minutes to here. At the very most, he’s an hour’s drive out of London.
But lots of places are an hour’s drive from London.
He isn’t given the leisure to consider it any further. The door opens. A figure appears silhouetted in the doorframe. He is tall. So tall that he needs to stoop in order to enter the room. As he does so, his features become clearer. Like Scott and his crew, this man has a shaved head, but there are no razor marks. He does not seem like the kind of man to bother with decorating himself. He is older – in his late thirties, perhaps – with sunken eyes and a pronounced Adam’s apple. He stands there for a few seconds before speaking. His voice is a high-pitched whisper, and he has a pronounced Eastern European accent. It’s not the kind of sound you want to listen to for long, especially when you know, as Zak does, that it must belong to Anton Rasnovic.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he says.
‘I doubt it,’ Zak replies.
A cold, cruel smile crosses Rasnovic’s lips. ‘You are wondering if whoever was listening in to your pathetic wire device – which my men have now completely destroyed – managed to trace you to the tower block in time to follow you here. I should tell you now that they didn’t. You were not followed, and the great advantage of our current location is that I can see anybody approaching by road from at least a mile.’
Silence.
‘You have nothing to say about that? You are still feeling brave?’
‘Not brave, Rasnovic. But I can’t pretend I don’t feel a little bit disgusted. Can’t you find a better way to make a living than selling guns to kids? Normal people find that distasteful, you know.’
Rasnovic’s smile grows broader. ‘Good. You have a little fire in your blood. I like a challenge. There is very little enjoyment to be had from questioning a subject who squeals at the very first turn of the screw.’
In the dim light, Zak sees a dreadful gleam in Rasnovic’s eyes. A hunger, almost.
‘My people will prepare you. That won’t take long. It’s the bit that comes after that will feel like it lasts for ever. You’ll be very grateful to me when I finally agree to end your life. But I won’t be doing that until you tell me who you work for, and where they are.’
Rasnovic steps backwards out of the door, returning to the darkness. Seconds later, Scott and his crew crowd in. They don’t speak, but for the second time in less than two hours they lay into Zak, kicking and punching his already bruised and aching body. Finally they tell him to stand up. It’s all he can do to stay on his feet as they drag him out of the cellar, and into an adjoining room.
There is more light in here – a fierce, blinding beam from a spotlight in the corner of the room. Along the far wall is what looks like a hospital bed. There are hooks in the ceiling, and Rasnovic – tall, thin and stooped – is there, holding a coil of rope.
‘It was very good of you,’ Rasnovic says, ‘to dress up in your best clothes. Scott tells me he offered to buy your shoes, and you refused.’
Zak juts out his chin at his tormentor, but he feels his jugular pulsing.
‘Take them off,’ Rasnovic says.
‘No.’
There is a dangerous silence.
Rasnovic steps forward, still clutching the rope. Zak sees that the end of it is tied into a hangman’s noose. And out of the corner of his eye, he sees that Scott is pointing his Browning in Zak’s direction.
There is nothing for it. He kicks off his shoes.
‘Good,’ Rasnovic breathes.
Scott scampers forward and grabs the trainers. Neither he nor Rasnovic nor any of the others seem to hear what Zak has been listening to for the past forty-five seconds. The distant but unmistakable thunder of a helicopter’s rotor blades.
And then it all starts up.
*
‘You need to be prepared for things to happen quickly,’ Raf told him. ‘If Rasnovic and his crew have the slightest idea that we’re on to them, we can’t predict what they’ll do. Do you know what this is?’
He held out a metal canister, about the size of a Coke can, with a lever along one side and a pin in the top.
‘Grenade?’ Zak asked.
Raf nodded. ‘But not a fragmentation grenade. It’s called a flashbang. When it detonates, it emits a blinding white flash and an extremely loud bang . . .’
‘The clue’s in the name,’ Gabs said.
‘A flashbang will totally disorientate you if you’re
not expecting it. We use it to give ourselves a few seconds’ advantage when we’re forcing an entry.’
A pause.
‘You will be forcing an entry, won’t you?’ Zak asked quietly.
Gabs smiled. ‘We’ve never let you down yet, have we, sweetie?’
*
There is not one flashbang, but two. Even though he is half expecting them, the shock of them almost knocks Zak sideways.
The next bang comes from a gun. A round from the direction of the door smashes into the spotlight that is lighting up the room. It is plunged into darkness, but only for a second.
There are two figures at the door. They’re carrying assault rifles. Fitted to each rifle is a powerful Maglite torch that cuts a directional beam through the darkness.
Voices. One male, one female, shouting at Rasnovic and his crew to hit the ground. No more rounds are fired, but the air is suddenly filled with dull thuds as fists and boots meet stomachs and knees. After the beatings Zak has endured, he can’t help feeling a certain satisfaction that his tormentors are getting a taste of their own medicine.
He hears Scott whimpering on the floor. In the semi-darkness he’s aware of Morton and Holden cowering pathetically in a corner.
Rasnovic is also on the ground, but he appears to have other plans. He manages to jump up and, still holding the noose, makes to slip it over the head of one of the newcomers.
‘NO!’ Zak gets there just in time. As the rope slides over the assailant’s head, he leaps forward and places his forearm in front of their face. The noose tightens, but Zak’s arm stops it from closing around the neck.
And then the second of the new arrivals is there. He knocks Rasnovic to the ground with a short, stubborn jab from the barrel of his rifle. A thump as he hits the floor.
It is Raf loosening the noose from around Gabs’s head. Zak lowers his forearm.
‘I thought you’d never make it,’ he says.
*
‘It’s a double-camera trick,’ Raf explained. ‘You know, when you make someone think—’
‘That they’ve spotted a hidden camera so they don’t bother looking for the one that’s actually watching them. One of your favourites, isn’t it?’
Raf shrugged. ‘In this case, the first “camera” is the wire you’ll be wearing. It’s crucial that Rasnovic’s footsoldiers see that you’re wearing it. They’ll remove it, destroy it and assume that they’ve dealt with your tracking device before taking you to their boss. It’s Rasnovic we really want. Scott and his boys are just the heads on the hydra. Cut one off, and another will grow in its place. If we want to put a stop to this gun crime, we need to kill the monster itself. Metaphorically speaking, of course. If everything goes according to plan, Rasnovic is looking at a long spell behind bars.’
‘Then we’d better hope they don’t locate the real tracking device, right?’
Raf gave him a serious kind of look. ‘Right.’
*
Rasnovic, Scott, Morton and Holden have their wrists cuffed behind their backs. They have been moved to a ground-floor room while Zak, Raf and Gabs wait for a police unit to take them away.
Zak pads towards Scott. He removes his trainers from the gun-dealer’s feet. ‘I think these are mine,’ he says.
Scott gives him a hateful, narrow-eyed look as Zak takes the shoes.
‘How did you find me?’ Rasnovic spits out the words. He sounds like he doesn’t want to ask the question, but can’t help himself.
Zak smiles. He holds up one of his trainers in his left hand. With his right, he takes hold of the heel and, with a little effort, twists it a quarter-turn clockwise. The heel comes away in his hand. From inside, he removes a thumbnail-sized tracking device.
Rasnovic and his crew stare at him, dumbfounded.
In the distance, there is the sound of a second helicopter. The police are arriving.
Gabs sidles up to Zak, her white-blonde hair mussed from the struggle in the basement. She indicates the tracking device. ‘Put it back, sweetie,’ she says. ‘We can’t give away all our secrets.’
He does as he’s told. Once he has refitted the heel, he puts on the shoes again and carefully ties up the laces.
The police arrive, four men, flak-jacketed and armed. ‘They’re all yours,’ Raf says, before nodding at Gabs and Zak.
Zak understands what he means. It’s time to go. The police can take it from here. He ignores the stares from the police officers – he is unusually young to be at a scene like this, after all – and leaves the room with his Guardian Angels.
There is a fifth police officer guarding the main entrance to the house; female. ‘Nice shoes,’ she says as Zak passes.
‘Thanks,’ Agent 21 replies. ‘Thanks very much.’
About the Author
• Joined the SAS in 1984, serving in military hot zones across the world
• Expert in overt and covert operations in war zones, including Northern Ireland, Africa, the Middle East and other classified territories
• Commander of the Sniper squad within the anti-terrorist team
• Part of an eight-man patrol on the Bravo Two Zero Gulf War mission in Iraq
• The mission was compromised. Three fellow soldiers died, and four more were captured as POWs. Chris Ryan was the only person to defy the enemy, evading capture and escaping to Syria on foot over a distance of 300 kilometres
• His ordeal made history as the longest escape and evasion by an SAS trooper, for which he was awarded the Military Medal
• His books are dedicated to the men and women who risk their lives fighting for the armed forces
You can visit Chris on Twitter@exSASChrisRyan and at his website: www.chrisryanadventures.co.uk
If you have enjoyed meeting Zak Darke, check out his full-length missions – available now and published by Random House Children’s Publishers:
AGENT 21
When Zak Darke’s parents die in an unexplained mass murder, he’s left alone in the world. That is, until he’s sought out by a mysterious man. ‘I work for a government agency,’ the man tells him. ‘You don’t need to know which one. Not yet. All you need to know is that we’ve had our eye on you. There’s a possibility you could help us in certain . . . operational situations.’
AGENT 21: RELOADED
Sneak on board an enemy ship. Gather information. And then destroy it . . .
A year ago Zak Darke became Agent 21, working undercover for a shadowy government agency. But for now, training is over. Zak is in seriously deep water.
AGENT 21: CODEBREAKER
An unknown bomber is terrorizing London. Where will he strike next?
Zak Darke is highly trained and perfectly placed to intercept the terrorist and stop the next bomb. But he’s not just up against the enemy. He’s operating against the clock as well . . .
Also by Chris Ryan:
The heroic, real-life personal account of Chris Ryan’s most famous mission, The One That Got Away is now reworked for a new generation.
Some authors just write about it. Chris Ryan has been there, done it – and here is the gripping real-life tale . . .
To find out more about these books, plus Chris Ryan’s ALPHA FORCE and CODE RED series, visit him at www.chrisryanadventures.co.uk
AGENT 21: THE WIRE
AN RHCP DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 448 17407 2
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Text copyright © Chris Ryan, 2013
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