by WOOD TOM
‘That’s their primary assault route,’ Victor told them. ‘If you hold your positions here, you’ll drive them back. You’ll have them in a crossfire.’
‘How do we know there are more?’ Sergei asked. ‘Maybe just one man with rifle.’
Victor looked at him. ‘If you believe that, go down those stairs and make your way outside.’
Sergei said nothing further.
‘What are you going to do?’ Dmitri asked Victor.
‘There are two staircases leading up, remember?’
He motioned for Gisele to come over to him. She did, walking as fast as she could while still crouched.
‘Where are you taking her?’ Dmitri demanded.
‘Out of the line of fire. If you and your guys can contain them at the first staircase, I can do the rest. Okay?’
Dmitri nodded. ‘Do it.’
With Gisele following close behind, Victor headed towards the furthest set of stairs at the far end of the office floor, straining to see in the darkness where the artificial ambient light failed to reach. A single corridor spanned the entire length, a staircase at either end, and doors leading off to offices, a kitchen, toilets and walk-in storage cupboards. He opened each door as he passed, improving visibility as the outside light seeped from the rooms’ windows into the corridor. The sniper had shot from the south. He couldn’t shoot through these windows.
Victor paused when he reached the open reception area at the far end of the corridor. The staircase lay out of sight around a corner. He listened. He didn’t know how many were out there. He didn’t know anything about their skill or armaments beyond the fact they had a sniper with a suppressed weapon who was a fine shot. He had to assume the others were as capable. They wouldn’t assault with sniper rifles though, but automatic weapons – sub-machine guns or assault rifles. His handgun would come off second in any firefight, but he knew the location better than any attacker and those attackers knew nothing about him.
Behind him, the Russians were nervous as they waited at the defensive positions he’d assigned them. They were gangsters now, not soldiers as they had once been long ago, but they had guns and he had no reason to doubt their ability or willingness to use them. Whether they would be able to repel whoever came up the staircase, he couldn’t be sure. But they would slow them down, and that’s all he needed them to do. He cared only about Gisele’s survival and his own.
He hand-signalled her to follow and whispered, ‘Hide behind that desk and keep down until this is over. Don’t come out. Okay?’
She nodded, breaths coming fast and quick. ‘Okay.’
He watched her get down to her hands and knees, then moved on. A floor-to-ceiling window covered the wall adjacent to the staircase. Victor saw no reflections of movement within. He gestured for Gisele to stay put, then hurried across the reception area, gun up and leading, sweeping around the corner as he stayed in partial cover. The staircase was clear. He heard nothing from below.
Victor checked Gisele was staying in her hiding place and then took up a position further into the room, from which he could cover the staircase. He felt no fear because fear was an emotional response to danger. The brain learned to fear before it learned how to solve problems. It was a survival mechanism: running from danger increased the probability of living through it. Emotion was older than thought, and stronger, but Victor had learned that the best way to survive was through cold logic and lateral thinking. He suppressed the part of his brain that wanted him to be afraid. He allowed no emotion to cloud his judgement and survived many times because no fear ever slowed him.
Behind him, the Russians waited in the darkness, breathing heavily and sweating. Their gaze passed over each other when they weren’t staring at the stairwell and its descent into blackness. They were tough, brave men but all were scared of what was coming. Adrenalin made them shake. Sweat shone on their faces. The thump of their racing hearts filled their ears. No one wanted to end up like poor Ivan with half a face.
They didn’t hear the shuffle of feet on the floor below, near to the staircase; didn’t see the figure that peered up from the darkness and made a swinging motion with his arm.
Something small and metal hit the polystyrene ceiling tiles above their heads, bounced off a wall and clattered and rolled across the thin carpet.
‘What was that?’ someone yelled.
A second later, the grenade exploded.
THIRTY-FIVE
Light flashed in the darkness, sparks and flames rushing out from the epicentre; shrapnel hissing through the air, burying into walls and melting ceiling tiles; debris raining down, clattering on the floor; smoke billowing, filling the corridor, swirling and snaking to fill the space; sound, powerful and excruciating, pulsed outwards, consuming all.
The dull thump of the explosion was colossal, the burst of light so bright it reached all along the corridor and illuminated the room around Victor for the briefest of instants, blinding him while the overpressure wave reverberated through his body.
A disorientation grenade. Or flashbang.
The Russians grimaced and squinted, their ears ringing with a high-pitched whine, their eyes seeing nothing but impenetrable white, streaming tears from the smoke.
A black-clad figure emerged at the top of the staircase, moving fast and assured in a half-crouch, picking out the closest target and hitting him in the chest with a burst of sub-machine gun fire. The Russian stumbled backwards into a doorframe, sliding down it, lifeless by the time he reached the floor, clothes soaked red.
The gunman swept his weapon away even as the Russian was still stumbling backwards; seeking targets, shooting at the next nearest enemy, but missing as he backed off through the doorway of another room. Nine millimetre rounds took chunks out of the door and wall.
The Russians returned fire, sporadic and desperate, blinded by the flashbang.
The gunman kept moving, firing in bursts, taking cover as behind him another black-clad figure followed, reaching the top of the stairs, sweeping the other way, covering the lead man’s blind spot, seeing no live targets but double-tapping the Russian slumped against the doorframe when he saw him twitch.
No enemy could be too dead.
The noise of the shooting was monstrous. The lights flashing were as bright as fireworks illuminating the office around Gisele in staccato strobes. The barrage of noise and light overloaded her senses. She sat huddled in a ball behind the desk, as the man had told her.
Smoke hung throughout the room. The air was a thick grey gloom that deepened shadows and dulled the orange glow of outside streetlamps.
She had her palms pressed over her ears in an attempt to muffle the incredible amount of noise. She kept her chin down, almost pressing against her chest and shoulders hunched.
Gisele flinched and gasped and trembled but didn’t scream or cry out. Despite her fear she knew she had to stay as small and quiet as she could manage. There was nothing else she could do.
Victor pictured what was happening because he couldn’t yet see. He knew about disorientation grenades. He knew how they worked. He knew what they did. He knew it had been thrown in ahead of an assault. The Russians would be deaf and blinded if they were fortunate, or injured or killed if they were not. In either case the staircase would be undefended. The assaulters would advance up it without risk and begin the massacre.
The positions he had assigned them would help. The flashbang would not have rendered them all incapacitated. If they had an advantage in numbers they could fight back. It was possible that they could still pin the assaulters long enough.
Victor’s world came back into focus as the noise of the gunfire grew louder. In between the semi-automatic shots from the Russians’ handguns, he recognised the distinctive click of the MP5SD, almost inaudible thanks to the integrated suppressor. He picked out two rhythms for two shooters. Such firepower was expensive and hard to source. These guys were better than well armed and had breached the warehouse without making a sound. They were no mere
street thugs or enforcers but a well-equipped, well-trained assault team.
Bullets blew through the partition wall Victor was using as cover, easily penetrating the cheap material, showering his face with dust and debris.
He ducked and moved away, further into the room, eyesight improving with every passing second. Though barely able to see and hear, the map of his environment in his mind was unaffected, as was his understanding of what was happening behind him.
He switched the pistol to his left hand and stuck it out of cover to let out a few blind shots towards the far staircase, knowing the Russians were out of the line of fire. The pop-pop-pop registered in his ears, but far quieter than it should do, masked by the incessant ringing from the explosion.
He turned to cover the closest staircase, but there was no sign yet of any other assaulters. He switched back again, seeing muzzle flashes flare bright through the smoke and darkness. The Russians were returning fire. Whether they had their senses back was irrelevant. Indirect fire could kill just the same as an aimed shot.
Rounds hit the ceiling somewhere above him. A light fixture exploded.
He shielded himself with an arm as chunks of polystyrene from the ceiling tiles and shards of glass rained down over him.
If the sniper and the two assaulters were the sum total of their attackers, Victor and the Russians could force them to withdraw with their superior numbers. But the team’s intel had to be accurate for them to know about the warehouse. Then they would have a good idea of the number of defenders. If there were only three then they would have attempted stealth, silently picking off their enemies. They hadn’t. The sniper had taken the first opportunity to reduce the number of enemies because the assaulters were already in the building. And they weren’t going for stealth. They were going strong. Because they had the firepower and, more importantly, the numbers.
The two at the far staircase were just one two-man fire team. There would be more, sweeping through the warehouse to clear it in a slick military assault. The Russians weren’t going to keep the two upstairs occupied long enough before the other team or teams joined the battle and overwhelmed them. If another fire team attempted to flank them using the near staircase, Victor couldn’t stop them.
The gunfire would eventually draw the attention of the Metropolitan Police, but the warehouse was in an industrial area with no residences and no through traffic. By the time they arrived, this would be over.
The plan had been to defend. It wasn’t going to work.
Victor hurried over to Gisele. She was shaking and even in the dark looked white with fear. He held out the pistol he had taken from Ivan’s corpse.
‘Is it true what you said before about knowing how to use a gun?’
She managed to nod and he passed her the weapon. She took a deep breath then released the magazine to check the load before pushing it back in place with her palm. She racked the slide.
Victor said, ‘If anyone approaches without identifying themselves, you shoot. Don’t hesitate.’
Her eyes were wide. Fear. Disbelief. But she nodded.
He didn’t know if she would. He didn’t know if she was capable of taking a life. He hoped that neither of them would have to find out if she was.
Victor descended the near staircase, fast but quiet, gun up and sweeping. He reached the ground floor offices. There were multiple rooms and corridors, leading both outside and into the rest of the warehouse. He paused and listened. He heard nothing.
The attackers must have entered the building from the west side, at the furthest point from the offices, where they wouldn’t be heard breaking in. There were rolling doors and loading bays along the west wall. They could have entered through any one of them or any number of them at the same time, either staying together or splitting up. They knew there were people in the offices upstairs, but they couldn’t know where else threats might wait, so had to move with some caution, but it wouldn’t be long before they reached the office segment. From the main warehouse, there were multiple ways in, but still only two staircases up for the attackers to converge on. Victor didn’t know where they were now, but he knew where they had to end up.
Shooting the attackers in the back wasn’t complicated. Doing it without getting caught in the Russians’ line of fire was far from simple.
He hurried, because there were no enemies at this staircase.
He was behind them.
THIRTY-SIX
Victor heard the second team before he saw them. A door – leading to the warehouse itself – was kicked open in a room behind him. He spun around and moved laterally because that room was divided from his only by glass. He managed to get off two snapshots before the assaulters spotted him, but missed because he was moving and so were they.
MP5s opened fire, bullets following him, punching holes through the glass until it gave way and collapsed in a shower of glittering shards. He shielded his face with an arm as he ran and slid through a doorway, shooting back under his armpit to buy him some time.
He gained only a couple of seconds before he heard, then saw, a grenade bounce off the doorframe and then a wall and then roll along the floor towards him.
He dived over a table, trailing a hand to tip it over as he fell, bringing the tabletop down on its edge behind him.
The flashbang exploded.
His eyelids were already squeezed shut but still he saw white. The overpressure wave thumped against the table and pushed it, and him, across the floor.
Shrapnel embedded in the tabletop. The plastic veneer melted and the chipboard beneath smouldered and burned. The grenade wasn’t manufactured to kill, but at close range could do so or maim. Had the table not protected him, he would now be out of the fight.
His eyes could just about focus and he heard nothing, but knew the two men were moving the second after the explosion, thinking him incapacitated.
He waited a moment – picturing them headed through the doorway, fast and well trained, hesitating because they couldn’t see him behind the table – then rolled to his side, arms and head coming out from behind it, squeezing off rounds.
The first man was hit in his centre mass, falling backwards into the second assaulter, bringing him down too as he fell.
Victor was up and moving, not risking further engagement because he had to get back to Gisele.
Muzzle flashes illuminated the first-floor corridor in intermittent bursts of light. The loud reports of the Russians’ handguns drowned out the suppressed automatic fire from the sub-machine guns that hissed through the air and tore through the thin interior walls.
Lumps of polystyrene fell from the ceiling. Dust swirled with the smoke from the flashbang. The air stank of cordite and fear.
The Russians backed off under the relentless stream of automatic gunfire, shooting back blind as they darted between doorways.
The lead assaulter ejected the empty magazine, slipped it back into the assigned pocket of his tactical vest, pulled out a full one and slammed it home. He worked the breach and resumed shooting.
The second put down suppressing fire while the other man was vulnerable, then reloaded himself while the first covered him in return.
The Russians were not elite but they had picked their positions with a frighteningly good tactical sense. The two-man fire team had expected to clear the office floor within sixty seconds. That wasn’t going to happen. This was going to drag on for at least another two minutes before the inevitable victory was achieved.
Victor hurried through the ground-floor offices, staying in the centre of rooms and corridors despite the natural inclination to seek safety near to walls, because in close-quarters battle it was along walls that bullets tended to travel.
He took a circuitous route through the offices to avoid any pursuers and to prevent rushing blindly into another fire team.
The din of the shooting upstairs grew louder as he neared it – the loud pops of the Russians’ handguns above the suppressed automatic fire of the sub-machine guns; the c
linking of expended brass and the thump of bullets striking walls; urgent commands and desperate screams.
He could tell the assaulters had taken the stairs and were fighting back the defenders. It wouldn’t be long before they were killed – or fled. He didn’t know the strength of their courage or how deep their loyalty to Norimov or Gisele went.
Victor slowed as he neared the hallway where the staircase was located. He saw no one on the ground level.
He approached the staircase, gun leading, aiming up as he moved before it, stepping through a swathe of orange gloom spilling through a window on the west wall. He smelled the acrid odour of cordite and the sulphur of the flashbang smoke. The assaulters were out of sight above him, but the suppressed fire of their sub-machine guns was loud and distinctive to his ear. The return fire from the Russians was sporadic.
‘Gisele,’ he called. ‘I’m coming up.’
There was no response. He didn’t know if that meant she couldn’t hear him over the gunfire or because she was dead. He ascended the first step, but stopped. A noise.
Footsteps in the hallway leading to the rest of the ground-floor level – where he’d come from a moment before.
He made out a man-sized shape in the darkness, realising at the same time that with the nearby window he was more visible than the new arrival – who would have seen him first.
Victor leapt from the staircase as another MP5SD opened fire. Rounds buried into the wall and staircase where he’d been standing, blowing out splinters of wood and a cloud of paint dust.
He hit the floor in a roll to disperse the impact, scrambling into the cover of an arrangement of office desks and chairs. Bullets chased him, taking chunks out of the cheap veneer and plywood furniture.
He dodged out of the line of fire, popping up to shoot back as his attacker moved forward to the mouth of the hallway, driving him back. Bullets sparked on steel supports.