A trickle of sweat began at his forehead as he wondered who else was being kept behind those locks – and whether anyone was coming to rescue them. He blinked to clear the thought and had begun to turn towards the concrete stairs that led back to the exercise yard when Blake shouted.
‘Hostile, left!’
Matt swore.
The guard had appeared out of the darkness – on his blind side. If Blake hadn’t shouted, they’d have been cut down without a chance. Stuck behind the rescued man, Thompson had no angle by which to shoot. Instead, Matt reached for his rifle, hell-bent on taking the guard before he could fire.
He cursed.
The comms lead had slipped down his arm during the extraction and was now entangled around his wrist, preventing him from turning his rifle towards the guard. The seconds passed by in slow motion as he kept his eyes on the guard, the man already reaching for his own weapon.
Matt gritted his teeth and tried to reach his weapon, all the while desperate not to drop the rescued man to the floor. He swore with frustration, cursing under his breath that he’d made such a rookie mistake in his haste to get the prisoner and his team to safety.
A tug at his arm caught his attention, and he looked down as the prisoner reached out, wrapped his hands around the rifle, and then swung the muzzle towards the guard and fired a quick burst.
The guard twisted where he stood, his face a mask of agony as he spun towards the floor.
The prisoner grimaced and relinquished the weapon.
‘Take it,’ he hissed before passing out.
Matt didn’t need a second invitation. He ripped the comms equipment from his neck, looped the loose wire, and then shoved it down his vest.
He turned to Blake and Thompson. ‘Let’s get out of here before we’re ambushed.’
They climbed the stairs, their progress hampered by the dead weight of the man they carried between them.
Matt could hear Thompson’s breathing, heavy and laboured. He frowned, almost ready to question the man’s fitness, until he realised the young medic was terrified. Matt glanced over his shoulder.
Sure enough, the man’s face was pale, sweaty, as he covered their rear.
Matt turned his attention back to the man whose arms were looped around his. Thompson would have to learn to live with the terror if he wanted to remain part of the elite group – same as they all did.
A dull light began to pierce the gloom as they neared the top of the stairs, and Matt squinted until his eyesight grew accustomed to the brightness compared to the underground complex.
Their team mate stood at the doorway, relief spread across his face as the team reached him.
‘Good to see you, sir.’
‘Likewise,’ said Matt. ‘Take him.’
He swapped places with the man, and then once he and Blake were heading towards the waiting helicopter as fast as they could, Matt turned his attention to the doorway.
Thompson was peering back into the gloom.
In a heartbeat, Matt cleared the space between them, pulling the young medic to one side, a split second before gunfire exploded up the flight of stairs.
Bullets sent chips of the concrete doorway flying past them as they huddled to one side.
Matt waited, keeping still until silence pierced the air, their attacker pausing to reload.
‘Go, go!’
He pushed Thompson towards the helicopter. ‘Don’t stop. Don’t look back,’ he ordered.
He made sure the young medic was on his way, then swung his rifle up and fired a short round down the staircase. Next, he reached for one of the grenades fitted to his body armour, pulled the pin, and tossed it down the stairwell.
A loud curse in a foreign language echoed up from the depths of the prison, before it was carried away by the explosion.
Dust and smoke chased heat up the stairs towards Matt, and he leaned back, closing his eyes against the blast wave, before he spun around and launched himself towards the helicopter.
The rotor blades began to increase in speed as he approached, and Blake leaned out of the aircraft, weapon steady as he waited for him.
As he drew closer, he saw Blake swing his rifle to the left, before a shout reached his ears.
‘Down!’
He hit the dirt.
He felt, rather than heard, the bullets as they ripped through the air above his prone body.
A cry from the direction of the building behind him carried across the wide expanse of the exercise yard, and then was cut off by another round.
‘Go!’
In an instant, he was on his feet and running once more.
He glanced over his shoulder and his heart fell. Armed guards were pouring out of a roof access and running towards the top of the prison, taking up positions around the yard.
‘Move!’ he yelled.
The helicopter began to rise in the air, the downforce hampering his progress, slowing him down.
He gritted his teeth, dug deep for another burst of energy, and pumped his arms. The gap between him and the aircraft closed.
Blake leaned out, his arm outstretched as the helicopter’s wheels left the ground. He yelled encouragement at him as Thompson leaned over his shoulder with a rifle, providing cover fire.
And then he was there, being hauled up into the aircraft as it turned and lifted into the air at a sickening speed.
His men thrust him to the centre of the fuselage, before they turned their attention back to the guards on the prison roof, firing short bursts until the helicopter plunged below the line of the mountain and out of range.
Matt crawled towards the open door and peered out as the landscape rushed past beneath them. He signalled to the man next to him to close the door, then stood on tired legs and made his way towards the front of the helicopter where Thompson and Blake were strapping the unconscious prisoner into a seat.
As he approached, the rescued man opened his eyes and raised his head, his eyes taking in the fascinated stares of the team, before falling to Matt. ‘Who the hell are you? What’s going on?’ he rasped.
‘Captain Matt Ryan,’ said the team leader, ‘of Her Majesty’s British Army.’
The man frowned. ‘Where are you taking me?’
Matt’s answer was interrupted by the pilot’s voice over the radio.
‘We’re clear of their airspace.’
The aircraft erupted with the roar from Matt’s men as they celebrated. He high-fived Blake and then turned his attention back to the rescued man and grinned.
‘You’re going home, Dan Taylor.’
CHAPTER 2
Three weeks later
Northumberland
Jack Halligan swung the door to his office open and hurried across the car park to the four-wheel drive vehicle that had been left within the secure compound.
His site office resembled a shipping container with a window punched in each side to let in light, and after three days responding to emails and phone calls and dodging requests from the client’s representative to attend yet another meeting to discuss progress, he was glad to escape.
He glanced at his watch.
The drilling crew were late – again.
He swore under his breath.
The project was already three months behind schedule due to a winter that had got its dates wrong and had piled snow on the Northumberland hills through to the beginning of April.
The project team had descended on the area within a single week from various parts of the world. He’d received the call as he was finishing a project in Saudi Arabia, and the opportunity to see the green rolling fields of England once more, not to mention pints of real ale, was too good to pass up. The company simply moved each of them around as projects were won and completed, and it was a lifestyle he enjoyed.
He turned at a shout from one of the other buildings.
‘What time do you call this?’ he grumbled as two men strode towards him.
‘Sorry, Jack.’ The taller of the two shook his h
and. ‘Phone call from Brazil. Had to take it. Problem with a rig over there, and they wanted my advice.’
‘Nice to be wanted, eh, Greg?’
The man shrugged. ‘Might as well make the most of it while the work’s there.’ He turned to his slightly shorter companion. ‘Jack, this is Mark. He’s going to be joining us today.’
Mark frowned as he shook Jack’s hand. ‘Is it normal for a project manager to ride out with the drilling team?’
Jack raised an eyebrow at the remark and turned to Greg, who coughed and forced a chuckle.
‘Jack’s very hands-on,’ he explained. ‘And when the drilling is behind schedule, I think he’s got a right to ride out with us, don’t you?’
Mark grunted a response and pointed to the large square-shaped silver case that Greg held between his hands, the strain on his face reflecting the weight of the box. ‘Do you want me to help you with that?’
His boss shook his head. ‘No. I’ll see to it. You get in the truck.’
Jack watched as the younger man stalked round to the passenger seat and wrenched the door open. ‘New boy?’
‘Yeah – my last engineer went AWOL two weeks ago. Got this guy at short notice through an agency, but he seems to know what he’s doing,’ said Greg. ‘He’s not a bad worker when he remembers to keep his attitude in check,’ he added with a wink.
‘Rather you than me,’ said Jack.
He waited until Greg had secured the silver box in the rear of the vehicle, then jogged round to the driver’s door, leapt behind the wheel, and started the engine.
Once Greg was on board, Jack steered the vehicle towards the site gate and waited while the security team let them pass.
Minutes later, they were travelling along a hedgerow-lined lane, the hills rolling under the vehicle’s wheels with ease. Mist rose from the valley below, burning away the light rainfall from the previous night.
After a couple of miles, Jack slowed as they approached a high-wire mesh fence that separated the road from a wide field. He braked and turned to the right at a small shipping container that had been converted into a temporary security office, guarding the entranceway through a padlocked metal gate set into the fence.
The first three weeks of the project had been spent using a government contractor who had used two teams of six men to encapsulate the property within a high metal fence that ran the perimeter of the land.
Four teams of two security men plus dogs now patrolled that perimeter day and night, leaving the project team in peace to do their work and run their tests in the middle of the fenced-off area, out of sight.
Two security officers approached the vehicle from the shelter of the container, and as one of them approached the vehicle, Jack buzzed down his window.
‘Morning,’ he said and handed over the occupants’ three passes.
‘You might be in for a quiet day today,’ said the guard. He pointed at the black cloud hastening across the hills towards them. ‘Especially if that one stays on course.’
‘Cheers,’ said Jack, redistributing the security passes to Mark and Greg.
‘What’s your ETA back here?’
‘We’ll probably be four to six hours.’ Greg leaned over the central column. ‘It’ll depend on how easy it is to get the samples we need.’
The security man signalled to his colleague, who added the details to the clipboard. ‘Okay, well – have a good one.’
He turned and walked over to the gate, selected a key from the bunch hanging off his belt loop, and swung open the metal barrier.
Jack buzzed his window up, put his hand up to the security team as the vehicle passed them, and then accelerated along the muddy farm track towards the first test well.
As the vehicle bumped and slid across the field, Jack steered it expertly over the terrain. Next to him, Greg checked his mobile phone.
‘You’d think in this day and age, you’d get a bloody signal out here,’ he grumbled.
‘What’s the problem?’
‘It’s my little girl’s birthday,’ said Greg. ‘I wanted to speak to her before she goes to school.’ He put down the phone and stared sightlessly at the passing landscape. ‘These days, she’s usually in bed and fast asleep by the time I get home.’
Jack held his tongue. All the men had complained when the accelerated delivery schedule had been revealed. Sure, they knew the company was under pressure to perform and would lose millions if it failed to bring the drilling programme back on track, but their bosses either chose to ignore or didn’t understand the effect it had on the team’s morale.
He checked in the rear view mirror. Mark was staring out the back window, the security hut disappearing from view as they rounded the base of a small hill and followed the track to the rig.
Jack turned his attention to the towering structure that could now be seen through the windscreen.
At nearly forty metres tall, the steel derrick of the rig dwarfed the four-wheel drive vehicle, its mass casting a shadow over the ground that had been shorn of grass and cleared for the construction crew, engineers, and geologists to work.
At the base of the rig, an assortment of machinery and equipment had been set out, ready for the testing to be undertaken.
Today, however, only the three engineers were present, their remit to obtain more samples for analysis to ensure the bore remained a valid prospect for the project.
Jack steered the four-wheel drive to within a few metres of the well, rubbed his eyes, and killed the engine.
‘Right, let’s get on with it,’ he said, climbing out. ‘I’d like to be back at the project office before dark.’
‘Scared a sheep might get you?’ asked Greg.
‘It’s not the sheep I worry about,’ replied Jack. ‘It’s the locals.’
Both men laughed as they joined Mark at the back of the vehicle. Jack pulled open the doors and helped Greg slide the silver box towards them.
He nodded at Greg and, taking the weight between them, they lifted it out of the vehicle and carried it across the uneven ground towards the test well.
Mark followed in their wake, carrying an armful of measuring devices and a laptop bag.
Once they were at the well, the two men set down the silver box, and Jack stepped away, his gaze catching the radioactive warning symbols emblazoned in yellow and black across the locking mechanism.
‘Okay, Greg. Do your magic.’
‘Very funny.’ The engineer crouched down and placed his hands each side of a combination lock inserted on the side of the box. ‘No looking now, okay?’
Mark joined Jack and placed the bags of equipment by his feet. Both men averted their gaze as Greg rolled his thumb across the four combination numbers.
With a soft click, the locking mechanism released, and Greg pushed open the lid.
Jack moved until he could see the contents.
Inside the box, in individual chambers, sat six tubes, each bearing a further radioactive warning.
‘Okay, let’s get a move on,’ said Greg and reached forward for one of the tubes.
‘I don’t think so.’
Jack’s head snapped round at Mark’s voice, his eyes opening wide at the gun that the man held steadily between his hands. ‘What the fuck?’
Mark didn’t answer. Instead, he aimed the gun at Greg, and calmly shot the engineer in the chest.
‘Shit!’
Jack turned and fled, heading back to the vehicle, his brain trying to process what he’d just witnessed. He needed to reach the four-wheel drive, radio for help —
A fire scorched through the soft tissue in his calf muscle a split second before he heard the gunshot, and he fell to the ground.
He cried out in pain, his insides turning to liquid as he began to crawl, not daring to look over his shoulder.
Surely the security team have heard the shots, he thought seconds before he realised they were too far away, safely ensconced in their makeshift office with the radio blasting music.
He turn
ed his head, trying to see if any of the dog patrols were within sight, but he couldn’t even see the perimeter fence from where he lay.
‘Shit, shit, shit,’ he hissed as he heard footsteps squelch in the mud behind him, getting closer.
What the hell was going on?
Why did Mark kill Greg?
His hands slipped on the damp grass beneath his fingers, and he tumbled to the side, landing on his wounded leg. An agonising burning sensation tore through the nerve endings, and he screamed with frustration as he tried to regain his balance.
‘Stop. Don’t make it harder on yourself.’
The calmness in the young engineer’s voice chilled Jack to the bone, and then the man was next to him. He glared at the man’s boots and then lifted his chin.
Mark lifted the gun until Jack could see down the barrel.
His mouth dry, he wondered if he would see the bullet that killed him as he raised his hands in the air.
‘Please, no,’ he begged.
***
Mark steadied his arm and pulled the trigger.
The project manager’s head exploded with the force from the close range shot, before his body fell backwards, his legs crumpling under him.
Mark flicked the safety on, turned, and stomped back to the silver box on the ground next to Greg’s prone body.
He kicked the dead man’s arms out of the way and then crouched beside the case and cursed.
Greg had been holding one of the thin canisters between his fingers when he’d been shot, and when he’d fallen, the canister had tumbled into the case, clipping the lead side of the box.
Now, it lay haphazardly across the rim of the box, its radioactive warning taunting him.
He exhaled slowly and reached out, turning the canister slowly back into its compartment. As it moved, his eyes opened wide, and he pulled his hand back with a jerk.
‘Fuck.’
He squinted at the small crack that had appeared in the casing and then glanced at his watch and shook his head.
There was no time left. He’d just have to explain what had happened when he got to the drop-off point with the others.
Three Lives Down (A Dan Taylor thriller) Page 2