by Chris Ryan
One chance to stop the enemy from escaping.
Porter spun away from the Ansat.
‘Get to the wagon!’ he shouted. ‘On me.’
‘Why?’ Bald said. ‘What’s the plan?’
‘There’s no time. Move!’
Porter spun around and darted back through the kitchen door, scrambling back down the corridor. He was thinking clearly now. The booze shakes had gone. So had the voice in his head, replaced by a cool, focused determination to stop Alexei Gabulov from succeeding in his plan.
The stopwatch in Porter’s head ticked away as he raced towards the front of the dacha. A light chopper, cocked and ready to fly, would take about sixty seconds from firing up the engine to skids in the air. Which didn’t give them much time to implement his plan.
We’ve got to stop them, Porter told himself.
It ends here.
I’m not gonna let these bastards win.
He bolted through the breach hole a metre ahead of Bald. The front end of the G-Class had suffered some heavy damage from the impact. The bonnet was buckled and bent out of shape and smoke was gushing out of the grille. Cracks starred the windshield, like bullet holes. But the vehicle would be looking a hell of a lot worse shortly, if his plan worked.
Porter leapt behind the steering wheel and dumped the AK-47 on the dash. He turned the ignition key as Bald dived into the front passenger seat alongside him.
‘The fuck are you doing?’ he said, catching his breath. ‘They’re getting away!’
‘Hold on, mate,’ Porter replied. ‘It’s gonna get bumpy.’
He shifted the gear lever into Reverse and hit the gas. Debris skidded off the bonnet as the wagon dragged itself clear of the wreckage at the front of the dacha. When they were four metres clear of the breach point Porter threw the wheel hard to the right then hit the brakes, bringing the vehicle to a halt at an angle, with the front end pointing towards the carport. Then he upshifted and accelerated, crunching through the gears as he sped towards the rough ground to the west of the dacha.
Forty seconds since the pilot had fired up the Ansat.
Twenty seconds before lift-off.
The wagon rocked and lurched as Porter steered off the smooth blacktop of the drive, onto the bumpy ground beyond. As soon as they’d sped past the western edge of the carport Porter threw another hard right, making a wide turn around the side of the dacha. The wagon shuddered as it slewed round the corner. Porter wrestled with the wheel, won a hard-fought victory, then straightened out so that they were bulleting past the western side of the dacha, heading north. Towards the grounds at the rear of the country house, the garden shed and the brilliant white gazebo.
Towards the helipad.
Fifteen seconds to go.
The chopper was sixty metres ahead of them, rotor blades whirlwinding. The engine thrum was deafening.
Realisation flickered across Bald’s face as he grasped the plan. He glanced at Porter. ‘Jesus. You’re fucking mad.’
Maybe I am, thought Porter. But sometimes, the maddest bastard wins.
‘Grab the AK,’ he said. ‘When I give the signal, you jump out and get ready to brass them guards up.’
‘You’re gonna get yourself killed.’
‘Just do as I say.’
Bald shut his mouth. Porter gripped the wheel tightly as they hurtled towards their target. He thought about the backpack nuke. About a bomb with a one-kiloton yield being detonated over a densely populated city. Tens of thousands of casualties. Not enough to destroy Moscow. But sufficiently powerful to reduce an entire neighbourhood to rubble and ash.
There would be enforced evacuations, to mitigate against radioactive fallout. Widespread terror. One of the biggest cities in the world, turned into a ghost town.
If this works, we’re heroes.
If we fail, it’s a fucking global disaster.
They were twenty metres from the Ansat now. The heli engine reached a high-pitched crescendo. Another ten seconds until it took off. The skids were already beginning to leave the ground. Porter fought to keep the wagon on target as he bore down on the heli at a frightening speed. Through the main compartment window he glimpsed Alexei Gabulov, screaming at the pilot in the cockpit.
‘NOW!’ Porter bellowed.
Bald tugged open the side door and scooped up the rifle resting on the dash. Then he threw himself out of the vehicle, rolling on to the ground twelve metres from the heli. Porter jerked the wheel, the open wagon door swinging back and forth like a pinball flipper as he adjusted course, aiming straight for the tail rotor fixed next to the fin.The most vulnerable part of any bird.
Porter braced his legs in the footwell as the G-wagon rammed into the back of the chopper. The rear rotor blades exploded as they struck the bonnet. They made a real mess of the front end of the wagon, grinding up the crumpled metal, striking against the radiator. Porter heard the hiss of steam inside the engine, the clang of the front wings as they struck against a section of the heli tail boom. Torn metal shrieked. The windscreen, already starred with bullet holes, fractured in a million places. Porter crouched low, keeping his head below the dash as the tail blades ground down the front end of the vehicle.
The Ansat engine groaned under the strain. Like a wounded beast. The fuselage shook violently. Without the counterbalancing torque of the tail rotor, the heli became an unstable platform, pitching and rolling as the pilot struggled to maintain control. Then he lost, and the chopper canted sharply to the left. The four main rotor blades pivoted down at an angle, slicing through the roof of the G-wagon, shredding it, peeling it back like a lid on a can of peaches. The front and rear windscreens exploded. Porter ducked lower as he felt the powerful downward pressure from the blades cutting through the air above.
There was a jarring shudder as the rotor mast came loose. The airfoils struck against the hard ground and sheared off, throwing up clumps of dirt and fragments of rotor blade. Then the Ansat pitched, rocking from side to side. A terrible screaming noise pierced the air as the main engine shaft shattered. The heli bounced up and down once, breaking apart the landing skids located beneath the fuselage. The chopper briefly threatened to topple before it came to a rest on its side, with the broken stumps of the four blades propping it up.
Porter looked back and spied Bald twelve metres behind the heli, just beyond the semi-circle of blade-churned turf. With the blades slowing to a rest Bald was moving forwards, gripping the AK-47 as he approached the stricken heli.
The thud of a door reached Porter’s ears, snapping his attention back to the Ansat. On the opposite side of the heli from the G-wagon he spied the pilot jettisoning out of the cockpit. The guy sprinted away from the chopper, making a run for the forest at the edge of the dacha.
A second later the door on the main compartment sucked open.
The engine crank continued to scream as one of the bodyguards staggered out of the cabin, blood streaming from a wound to his scalp. The guy with the shaven head. He was following the basic human instinct for anyone sitting in a wrecked piece of machinery, surrounded by highly flammable fuel. Get the fuck out of there.
Bald was ten metres away from the Ansat now. Weapon raised.
Shaven Head didn’t appear to spot him. Not at first. The guy’s senses were overloaded with fear, Porter guessed. His eardrums would be splitting from the terrifying shriek of the engine, he would be disorientated after being thrown about inside the heli. He wasn’t thinking about anything beyond the next three seconds. The bodyguard didn’t know or care about what might be waiting for him on the other side of the cabin door. He just wanted to get the hell away from the heli.
He stepped outside, looked up. Saw Bald nine metres away, his index finger clinching the AK-47 trigger. The bodyguard reached down for his holstered pistol. Never got there.
Bald fired a three-round burst. The muzzle flash lit up the churned-up soil and shattered rotor blades. The rounds struck the shaven-headed bodyguard in the chest region in a close grouping, givin
g him a trio of bullet holes to go with the head injury. Open-heart surgery, Regiment-style. He gargled a death note as he fell away.
Through the window, Porter glimpsed the remaining bodyguard wrenching open the main cabin door on the other side of the heli. Alexei Gabulov was in his seat, grappling with his safety belt.
They’re not getting away. Not this time.
Porter sprang open his driver’s side door and jumped down to the ground, gripping his MP-443 Yarygin. The engine shriek died down to a rattling whine as he circled around the tail of the Ansat, racing towards the cabin door on the side of the chopper facing away from the G-wagon. Porter glanced across to his left and saw Bald six metres further back, hurrying after him.
Porter faced forward and increased his stride. He knew what the Russians were thinking. They would have seen the other bodyguard getting dropped and instinctively decided to try their luck by escaping through the other exit. But it wasn’t going to save them.
Not today. As Porter swung around the rear of the chopper he glimpsed the pilot at his three o’clock, thirty metres into the distance and counting. Running towards the forest. Not a tactical withdrawal. A desperate retreat. He wasn’t any kind of threat. Porter ignored him and trained the Yarygin’s rear sights on the cabin door.
The door had been wrenched open. The remaining bodyguard had emerged from the heli. The guy who had been lugging the backpack nuke. He had his back to Porter as he reached into the cabin, helping Alexei Gabulov out of his seat.
The guy must have glimpsed Porter’s movement at his nine o’clock. Because he instantly dropped his hands and turned away from the cabin door, whipping round to face the operator standing next to the knackered tail, six metres away.
Just in time to see his killer’s face.
Porter fired twice.The first round smashed into the bodyguard’s leg just above the shin, shattering his kneecap. The second landed about two feet higher, clipping him in the midriff and doing all kinds of damage to his internal organs. He gasped and melted to the ground. Porter raced over and gave him a tap to the head, just to make sure.
Bald swung into view round the back of the heli a beat later. Shouting at Porter at the top of his voice as he ran over.
‘The brother! Get the bastard! Get him out of there!’
Porter rushed forwards, sprinting over to the cabin door ahead of his mucker. The door was tilted slightly from where the chopper had come to a rest. He clambered up, scanning the interior.
Alexei Gabulov was slumped in one of the rear-facing seats in the main compartment, struggling with his seat buckle. The military rucksack and the black duffel bag squatted by his feet, along with a smaller grey backpack. Some sort of emergency go-bag, Porter guessed.
Gabulov looked up. He saw the gun in Porter’s hand. Saw the two dead BGs on the ground either side of the wrecked helicopter, and quickly formed a decision.
The president’s brother threw up his hands.
‘Don’t shoot!’ he cried.
FORTY-SEVEN
Porter stared at Alexei Gabulov for a long beat. Up close, the guy in the grounded heli looked different from the picture Tarasov had shown them. His face had filled out and was pitted around the cheeks. From too much drinking or too little exercise, or some combination of both. His arched eyebrows were bushy and wild. His beard was now tinged with grey hairs. About the only thing the Gabulov brothers had in common was their taste in luxury watches. Alexei wore a gold-cased Richard Mille watch, visible on his left wrist.
‘Please,’ he said, keeping his hands raised. ‘I surrender.’
Bald had caught up with his mucker and peered into the cabin. ‘How the fuck does he know we’re English?’
‘I heard you,’ Alexei Gabulov replied in a wobbly voice. ‘Just now. Talking outside.’
The Ansat engine stopped whining and finally gave up. Porter lowered his pistol, stuffed it down the back of his trousers and grabbed hold of the younger Gabulov by his hunter’s jacket. The mobster grunted in pain as Porter hauled him out of the helicopter cabin and turfed him onto the ground next to the slotted BGs. Alexei Gabulov fell forward, landed on his hands and knees, then scrabbled away from the corpses of the bodyguards. Like getting shot in the head was infectious. Something he could catch.
‘Watch this prick,’ Porter said, cocking his head at Bald. ‘I’ll fetch the package.’
‘Better hurry it up, mate. The neighbours will have woken up by now. We’ll have company soon enough.’
Porter hurried back over to the heli cabin, leaving Bald to keep watch over Alexei Gabulov, his gun trained at a spot between the guy’s small, black eyes.
He went for the military rucksack first. The backpack nuke. It was nestled between the black duffel bag and the go-bag. At first sight, it looked almost identical to the Mk-54 SADMs the Yanks had developed. A metal housing container shaped like a forty-gallon drum, encased inside a rugged green canvas, secured with various ropes and padding, with a battery pack strapped to the side of the canvas, connected to the main unit by a series of wires. Porter grabbed the nuke by the straps, hefting it up. Carefully. He was sure the containers had been designed to absorb the occasional bang, but he didn’t want to accidentally set the bastard off.
The bomb was heavy. Thirty kilograms or so. Ten kilos more than the Bergen that SAS candidates were required to carry during Selection. Portable, but only just. Anyone less than supremely fit would struggle under the weight of it. Not the sort of thing you wanted to lug around a battlefield for any length of time.
Porter set the rucksack down next to the chopper.
Which is when he heard the ticking noise.
He glanced down at the nuke. There were several switches and knobs on the lid of the metal casing, connecting it to a firing unit. Some sort of code-decode lock, requiring a complicated sequence to initiate. The kind of thing you needed a manual for. A very old setup, from another era. From a time when Amstrad computers were state-of-the-art, and everybody expected the world to end in a nuclear apocalypse.
Next to the switches was a mechanical timer. A cream-coloured dial, notched with a black marker and encircled by a series of points numbered from zero to sixty. Like minutes on a clock face. The dial had been twisted clockwise, Porter noticed. To the thirty-minute mark. There was a red light next to the dial, flashing repeatedly. Below the light was a single word in Russian, but Porter didn’t need Google Translate to tell him what the word meant.
Armed.
Bald looked over at his mucker. ‘What is it?’
Porter didn’t respond at first. He stared down at the timer as it continued to make its soft rhythmic tick. A sick feeling brewed inside his chest.
‘This fucking thing is on a timer,’ he said after a beat.
Bald frowned but stayed next to Alexei Gabulov, keeping his weapon pointed at the Russian. ‘Why the fuck would he activate the nuke before taking off?’
Porter glanced at the chopper. Then back at the nuke. Several dots connected inside his head.
‘The heli was the delivery system,’ he said. ‘He was gonna set the timer, get vertical, then drop the nuke somewhere over the city. Then clear off before it detonated.’
Which made several kinds of sense. Kicking out the bomb over a built-up neighbourhood was a more effective delivery system than a truck or a panel van. The guys in the heli could drop the package on the rooftop of a house or tower block, hit the throttle and get away. If they timed it right, they stood a reasonable chance of clearing the blast radius. Better than by delivering the package on foot, at least, with the added potential risk of being slowed down by traffic and crowds. Any witnesses on the ground would be incinerated in the land burst.
Five thousand dead.
Revenge.
‘What’s the timer on that thing say?’ asked Bald.
‘Twenty-nine minutes.’
‘Shit.’
The timer continued ticking.
‘Check the other bag,’ Bald added. ‘We need to know how m
any of these things we’re dealing with.’
Porter ducked back inside the cabin and retrieved the duffel bag. The one they’d seen the bodyguard carrying across from the dacha. It felt even heavier than the backpack nuke. He struggled to lug it out of the chopper.
The bag jangled as Porter set it down next to the military rucksack. He pulled back the zipper, moving fast, fighting to ignore the anxious thumping inside his chest. Every second they wasted at the dacha meant less time to get away from the resulting blast.
Something gleamed dully inside the duffel bag.
Not another nuke. But something else entirely.
Gold bullion bars.
Each one was the size of a brick, stamped with the logo of the Swiss Bank Corporation, with a serial number at the top and the metal purity percentage at the bottom. Each brick weighed one kilo. A market value of thirty-five thousand pounds per bar. Porter figured there had to be at least thirty bars stuffed inside the bag. Maybe more.
‘Gabulov’s getaway funds,’ he said.
‘Jesus. That’s what he must have had stashed in them safes.’
Porter spun away from the bag of bullion. They had more important things to be dealing with. Namely, the one-kiloton nuke on a timer delay, two feet away from them. He marched over to Alexei Gabulov, hauled the Russian to his feet and shoved the pistol muzzle against his cheek.
‘How do we stop that thing from going off?’ he demanded. ‘Tell us, or I’ll put a fucking hole in your head.’
Alexei Gabulov sneered. ‘You think that’s the first time someone’s put a gun in my face? You don’t know shit.’
‘We know more than you think. We know you were gonna drop that nuke over a slum. Kill thousands of Chechens.’
Gabulov’s expression tightened. His eyes shrank to pin-pricks.
‘Viktor sent you? I should have known. That little bitch was never loyal to his motherland. He doesn’t know the meaning of the word. The only loyalty he ever had was to his wallet.’
‘You’ve lost,’ Porter said. ‘It’s over.’
‘I don’t think so. Zukotka is home to a lot of oligarchs. Friends of my brother. They die, Viktor will take the blame. My people will put out a story that the Chechens planted a bomb at my house. Viktor will be forced to act. Take action against the Muslim filth polluting our great country. Bomb Chechnya to shit. We’ll still win.’