Global Strike

by Chris Ryan

Money and power, thought Porter.

  Same the world over.

  Bald followed Porter’s directions, making a quick left, then a right. Keeping to an even forty as they continued deeper into the village. Two minutes later, at 0426 hours, Alexei Gabulov’s dacha slid into view.

  The place was set thirty metres back from the main road, on a parcel of land the size of two football pitches, surrounded by a seven-foot-tall wire mesh fence topped with coils of razor wire. A narrow, rutted track led off the main road to the gated entrance at the front of the property.

  ‘Slow us down,’ Porter said.

  Bald downshifted, dropping the wagon to ten miles per as they passed the dacha on a drive-by recce. As they crept along Porter buzzed down his side window and strained his eyes in the grainy half-light, scanning the entrance at the far end of the track, fifty metres away.

  An iron gate guarded the front of the dacha. Two metres tall, painted black and decorated with ornate symbols, fitted to a pair of metal hanging posts. The style was English country estate. Grand and solid-looking, but not impenetrable. To the left was a wooden gatehouse. A hefty guard prowled the area in front of the gates. He was decked out in a tight-fitting black suit, his chubby hands clasped around an AK-47 assault rifle. The guard lifted his eyes to the wagon as it rolled past, his head cocked.

  Fifty metres further back, on a slight incline, Porter glimpsed the dacha itself.

  It was humbler than he had expected. A one-storey dwelling, situated north of the main gate, at the far end of a straight drive. The building itself was like something out of a Scandinavian furniture catalogue. Timber-framed and wide, with floor-to-ceiling windows and a roof shaped like a skateboarding halfpipe, flat in the middle, curved upwards at the corners. Security lights covered the open ground to the front and sides of the dacha, making a stealthy approach impossible.

  A hundred metres beyond the dwelling, the muddied ground slanted down towards a lake, grey as lead in the pallid light before daybreak. Picturesque on a warm summer’s evening, probably. But at four-thirty in the morning it looked cold, bleak and hostile.

  There was an outlying shed forty metres behind the dacha, next to an ornate gazebo, white as icing sugar. Both were linked by a footpath to the rear of the main dwelling. Porter knew from the description Tarasov had given them that there was a helipad situated directly to the rear of the dacha, on the shores of the lake.

  A Dartz Kombat T-98 sat idle in the carport to the left of the front door. Armoured SUV of choice for the Russian elite. Through the tall windows Porter could see several lights glowing brightly inside the dacha. He thought, There’s still time.

  We’re not too late.

  ‘Someone’s home. We’re in business.’

  Bald said, ‘How many guards are we looking at?’

  ‘One on the gate.’

  ‘Carrying?’

  ‘AK-47.’

  ‘Any sign of the others?’

  ‘No.’

  Bald chewed on that int for a second. ‘Must be inside the gaff. Helping to load the nuke.’

  ‘That’s what I’m thinking.’

  ‘Looks like Tarasov was right. They’re not expecting trouble.’

  Porter turned to his mucker. ‘What do you reckon?’

  ‘The gate’s the weak point. No way we can climb over that fence. We can’t sneak inside either. Not with all them security lights. We’d be spotted before we could get near to the building. But if we crash through that gate, we can hit the fuckers hard. Deal with them before they can get their shit together.’

  ‘What about the guard?’

  ‘Run him over. Easy.’

  ‘But the other guards in the dacha will hear us. Soon as we breach the gate. They’ll come running out.’

  ‘We could ram the dacha.’ Bald grinned. ‘Use the wagon as a battering ram, like. Put a hole in the front of it. Drop the guards, grab the brother and the nuke.’

  Porter glanced at the digital clock on the dash as they rolled on past the entrance. 0428 hours. Thirty minutes until Alexei Gabulov’s friends and family boarded their flight to Colombia. Porter could feel his heart beating steadily faster now.

  Bald said, ‘There’s no time to OP the shack. We’ve got to go in now, mate. No fucking choice.’

  Jock’s right, Porter told himself.

  We’ll have to go in hard and fast.

  The way we were trained in the Regiment.

  ‘Let’s do it,’ he said.

  Bald rolled on past the house for fifty metres. Then he yanked the steering wheel hard to the right and K-turned in the road, so the nose of the G-wagon was pointing east again, facing the dacha entrance.

  As they moved slowly forward, Porter reached into the glove box and took out the two MP-443 Yarygins he’d stored there. He tugged back the sliders on both pistols, checking that both weapons had a round of 9x19mm 7NS brass nestled in the chamber.

  Eighteen rounds in each clip. A total of thirty-six bullets. To deal with three guards on the BG team, plus whatever firepower the president’s younger brother might be packing. It wasn’t much. But it would have to be enough.

  ‘Ready?’ Bald asked.

  Porter nodded at his old friend. ‘Let’s go,’ he said.

  Bald steered the Mercedes G-Class east. Back down the main road.

  Towards Alexei Gabulov’s dacha.

  FORTY-FIVE

  The first pale glimmer of dawn glowed on the horizon as they approached the dacha. Porter could see the track leading to the front gate, forty metres ahead of the G-Class, to the left of the road. There was a barren field to their right, littered with mounds of rubble and worn car tyres. In the distance, more new-build compounds crowded the horizon. A lot of people were moving to the area, evidently. Muscovites fleeing the city in search of cleaner air and cheaper prices.

  As they hit the turn in the road, Porter ran through the plan in his mind. Their attack depended on speed. They would smash through the gate in the wagon, running over the guard. Bullet up the driveway towards the dacha and breach it using the G-Class. Overrun the other guards inside, then seize Alexei Gabulov. Bald and Porter had been given no indication about where he might be hiding the nuke at his dacha, so they’d have to torture that information out of him. Once they had the package, they would bug out, race to the RV. Make the handover, get Street released. Then return to the British embassy on the banks of the Moscow River for the debrief.

  If it all went to plan.

  Bald steered down the track at a steady clip. Metal signs were staked into the ground either side of the track, carrying stark warnings. White Cyrillic text against bright-red backgrounds. Some of the signs had crosses through them. Porter couldn’t speak Russian but the implication was obvious.

  Keep out.

  They drove on.

  Twenty-five metres away, the guard saw the approaching wagon and lumbered forward from the gatehouse. He moved like he was wading through a foot of snow. Every stride was slow and heavy and exaggerated. The guy took up his position a metre in front of the gate, his legs planted wide apart, his right arm thrust out with the palm facing Bald and Porter. Left arm by his side, gripping the AK-47.

  An aggressive stance. The guard was putting on a show for the driver of the G-Class rumbling towards him. Staking out his territory. Sending Bald a message.

  Stop.

  A predictable move. But also a mistake. Because that stance also made him an easy target to hit.

  Fifteen metres to the gate now.

  Bald slowed down until he was edging along in first gear. A deliberate tactic. He didn’t want to alarm the guard. A sudden burst of speed would persuade the guy to jump out of the way, or hoist up his weapon and discharge a burst at the windscreen. But at five miles per hour, Bald wasn’t presenting any kind of threat.

  Not yet.

  The guard in the tight-fitting suit still had his right arm extended. Totally unaware of the pain that was about to come his way. At ten metres, he shouted something at Bald in Russi
an. A throated, guttural command. A verbal extension of the thing he was doing with his hand. Some sort of threat.

  Bald kept going.

  The guard in the undersized suit still stood his ground. Presenting himself as a target, dumbly assuming that the wagon would stop.

  At seven metres, he realised his mistake.

  He brought up his AK-47, training the barrel on the windscreen.

  ‘Floor it!’ Porter shouted.

  The rifle muzzle sparked as Bald hit the gas. Porter and Bald ducked low in their seats as a four-round burst of hot lead starred the windscreen. Porter didn’t see where the shots landed but he heard the cracked-ice shattering of glass, the muffled feathery thump of rounds tearing through the head rests a few inches above them.

  Three more rounds punched through the glass, one glancing off the bonnet. Bald kept the pedal to the floor, the engine roaring as the wagon catapulted forward.

  Two metres to the gate now. Through the fractured windscreen Porter glimpsed the guard lowering his rifle before he dived out of the way of the onrushing motor. A last-gasp calculation. He was fast, but not fast enough. The front corner of the G-Class clipped the guard as it bulleted past, sending him into a tailspin and knocking the rifle out of his grip. He landed on his back next to the gate house. In the next instant the front bumper collided with the gate, crashing through it with a furious clanging of broken chains and flying sparks, tearing it free from its hinges. As soon as they were through Bald hit the brakes, the G-wagon lurching as it skidded to a halt a couple of metres beyond the shattered gate. In his side mirror Porter could see the guard writhing on the ground, the AK-47 just out of his reach.

  ‘Fucking do him, mate!’ yelled Bald.

  Porter sprang the door handle and slid out from his seat, thumbing the safety on his Yarygin down to the Fire position. He jumped down and whipped round to his right. The guard was three metres back from the wagon, next to the busted gates. He looked up, caught sight of Porter charging towards him and thrust an arm out, reaching for the assault rifle he’d dropped.

  Porter was on the guy in a flash, sidefooting the weapon away before he could snatch it up. Then he dropped low and gave the guard the double-tap special to the back of the head. His body made a death-spasm before he stilled. Then Porter grabbed the AK-47 and pounded back across the ground to the G-Class. Bald was already gunning the engine as Porter hurled himself into the front seat.

  ‘GO! FUCKING GO!’

  The wagon roared as they tore down the front drive. Fifty metres of brightly lit blacktop stretched out ahead of them. At the end of the drive stood the dacha, the entrance lit up by a bank of security lights. Carport to the immediate left of the dwelling. Shed and gazebo forty metres further back from the carport, ninety metres from Bald and Porter. No signs of activity at either structure.

  Eighty metres beyond the main building stood the leaden grey lake, flat and wide. Dense forests of pine and other conifers extended along both sides of the shore, like black arms hugging the water. The lights were still glowing inside the dacha, Porter saw. Which meant the Russians were somewhere inside.

  That’s where Alexei and his heavies must be, he told himself. That’s where we’re going to make our attack.

  The G-Class picked up speed as Bald accelerated towards the dacha. The enemy would have heard the gunshots at the front gate by now, Porter reasoned. They were probably grabbing their weapons at that very moment, rushing to the front door to deal with the intruders.

  We’ve got only a few seconds left to breach the dacha, he thought. Stun the Russians and brass them up before they can put the drop on us.

  Thirty metres to the dacha.

  Twenty metres.

  Ten.

  This is it now.

  No going back. We’re committed.

  Porter braced himself as the wagon smashed into the front of the dacha like a motorised battering ram. The G-Class must have weighed over two thousand kilograms and it bulldozed into the front of the wooden dwelling with a tremendous crashing noise, tearing the door off its hinges. Porter heard the timber cladding splitting, the shatter of the headlamps as the wagon ploughed into the main room. Debris rained down on the bonnet from the roof, a pitter-patter of loose tiles and torn metal and broken glass. Bald shifted into Reverse, dragging the wagon back from the damaged wall. In the same movement Porter burst out of the vehicle, raising his AK-47 as he bulled through the hole into the smoke-filled space inside, sweeping the rifle’s s iron sights from left to right in a broad arc as he scanned for his first target.

  Porter found himself in a living room eight metres wide by six deep, with wood-panelled walls and a beige corner sofa next to a couple of bucket chairs. Flat-screen TV the size of a cinema screen fixed to the wall. Wide corridor at the far end leading past several rooms towards the kitchen at the rear of the dwelling, fifteen metres away.

  No sign of the guards.

  Or the brother.

  Bald was hurrying forward from the wagon, armed with the other Yarygin. He stormed through the gap between the G-Class and the hole in the front of the dacha, scanning the area to the left of the breach.

  Nothing.

  ‘Room clear,’ Bald said.

  ‘Shit,’ Porter said.

  Where’s the nuke?

  And the brother? They tore across the living room and moved quickly down the corridor, clearing the rooms either side. Like they’d done countless times before in the Regiment, in training exercises at the Killing House down in Pontrilas. Bald going first, sweeping to the left. Porter hard on his heels, clearing the right-hand side of the entry point, shouting when the room had been cleared. Working as a team. They tackled the bathroom first, then the two smaller guest bedrooms. Moved further down the corridor and checked the master bedroom too. All the rooms were decorated with the same modernist furniture and colourful fabrics. Like sweeping through an IKEA showroom.

  The rooms were empty. But also chaotic. Chests of drawers in the guest bedrooms had been pulled open. Bundles of clothes taken from the master bedroom closet and dumped on the bed. The bathroom cabinets had been cleaned out. As if someone had left in a hurry.

  The last room on the left was the study.

  Bald went first. Then Porter.

  He took a step inside and twisted to the right. Saw something in the corner of the room, beside the floor-length curtains. A large safe, built into the floor. The patterned rug covering it had been rolled back and the safe door was open. The contents had been removed, Porter noticed. Another safe fitted to the wall above the study desk had also been cleared out.

  Bald glanced briefly at the emptied safes, then spun towards Porter. ‘Where the fuck is everyone?’

  Porter didn’t answer. He swung back out of the study and carried on towards the kitchen at the rear of the dacha, dread tightening in his stomach.

  Maybe we’re too late, he thought.

  Maybe Gabulov and his heavies have already got away.

  Then he caught sight of the back door.

  The door was on the left side of the kitchen, next to the old gas stove. It was hanging open. Through the gap, Porter glimpsed the grounds at the rear of the dacha.

  As he drew near a distant whining noise reached his ears. It was swiftly followed by a dull, incessant thrumming. A sound Porter recognised at once.

  The relentless whump-whump of helicopter blades turning.

  FORTY-SIX

  Porter ran over to the kitchen door, his heart hammering madly inside his chest. Bald sprinted after him as Porter charged through the open doorway, looking out across the open stretch of ground between the dacha and the wide grey lake a hundred metres to the north. Security lights dotted around the estate illuminated the land. Like floodlights on a football pitch.

  Then Porter saw it.

  An Ansat light helicopter, black with white stripes down the side of the fuselage, parked on a helipad, eighty metres beyond the kitchen door. The four blades on the main rotor were spinning as the engine drone
d. The heli was turning and burning, preparing for take-off.

  A figure was running towards the chopper from the direction of the dacha, seventy metres ahead of Bald and Porter, decked out in the same type of dark, ill-fitting suit as the guard on the front gate. He had a black duffel bag slung over his shoulder, weighing him down as he sprinted the last few paces to the heli.

  Two more figures had almost reached the Ansat, Porter saw. They were bolting over from the garden shed fifteen metres due west of the helipad. The pair of them were two metres from the heli now. Another guard in a black suit, shaven-headed. And a third guy, short and squat, with a thick beard, wearing a hunting jacket and a woodsman’s cap. At a distance, he looked like a smaller, fatter version of the Russian president.

  Alexei Gabulov.

  The guard racing alongside Gabulov was also carrying something on his back, Porter noticed. A military-green rucksack, with some sort of bulky cylindrical object stuffed inside it.

  The nuke.

  So that’s where he’s been hiding the bomb.

  In his garden shed.

  There was no time to put the drop on them. Gabulov and the guard at his side reached the Ansat before Porter could line up a shot with the AK-47. A moment later the guard with the duffel bag joined them. He dumped the bag on the floor between their legs and climbed into the main compartment alongside the other two.

  Is there another nuke in that thing? Porter asked himself.

  Has the president’s brother got two bombs, instead of one?

  The cabin door on the side of the Ansat slid shut. The main rotor blades began turning faster and faster.

  ‘Shit,’ Bald said. ‘Fuckers are getting away.’

  Several thoughts flashed through Porter’s head at once. His professional eye told him there was no way they could stop the Ansat from lifting off from where they were positioned. Not with the weapons they had to hand. Several well-aimed bursts into the engine block from a heavy machine gun might do the trick. But a nine-milli pistol and an AK-47 weren’t going to do any serious damage to the machinery. Not at this distance.

  There was only one way they could stop the heli.