Agent 21: Reloaded: Book 2

by Chris Ryan

  Ready to shoot. Which meant Zak had to shoot first.

  He raised the flare, took aim, and fired.

  Firing a flare was nothing like firing one of the weapons back on the range at St Peter’s Crag. It was unwieldy and inaccurate. Zak didn’t mean to hit any of the approaching crew members; all he wanted to do was scare them. But the flare was difficult to control. It made a rushing sound as Zak fired, and brushed so close to one of the advancing crew members that it scorched his right arm, even through the man’s wet clothes.

  The crew member screamed, and the others were thrown into disarray, shocked because they’d come under fire when they didn’t expect it. Zak grabbed Bea’s hand. ‘Run!’ he shouted. ‘Now!’

  The two of them sprinted towards the surprised crew members. Zak kept the flare gun in his hand – not because he could use it, but because in the confusion the men might think it was a loaded weapon. They burst through them just as Zak heard a gunshot from behind. Even with the wind blowing strongly, he felt a rush of air as the round whizzed past his head.

  ‘They’re firing!’ Bea yelled.

  ‘I noticed,’ Zak replied as they continued sprinting towards the stern of the ship, away from both sets of crew members. He didn’t bother looking over his shoulder to see if they were giving chase. He knew they would be.

  Another gunshot. Another rush of air. They had to get to cover. The stern of the ship was just ahead. If they could turn the corner it would give them a few seconds to regroup. A few seconds to …

  ‘What’s that?’

  Bea pointed out to sea as they ran. Zak looked up. He saw something out there. A flash of grey, just a few shades darker than the sea itself. Close. Fifty metres, no more. It disappeared as the waves swelled – too quickly for Zak to be sure of what he’d just seen. But he had a pretty good idea.

  They kept running. Seconds later they turned the corner, round to the stern of the boat and out of range of the shooters. Zak gave himself a moment to look out to sea again, and the next wave that crashed over him was one of relief.

  Vessels approaching. Four that he could see, but unlike any vessels Zak had seen before. They were slender, long and pointed, like the nose of Concorde, and they seemed to pierce the rolling waves rather than float on the top of the sea. And they were fast. Bullet fast.

  ‘Looks like the cavalry’s arrived!’ he shouted at Bea. ‘My money’s on the SBS …’

  But Bea wasn’t looking. She was too busy grabbing a flotation ring from the body of the boat. Zak looked round. The crew members were turning the corner. The armed men led the pack. Zak couldn’t see Cruz, but somehow he just knew his nemesis was in the mix.

  Bea barged past him, clutching the flotation ring with both hands. She twisted her body round and, with a loud shout of effort, she hurled the ring towards the approaching men. It struck them full on, like a bowling ball making a strike, hitting three of them across the face. They fell back. One of them discharged his weapon accidentally, but the round shot harmlessly up into the air.

  Zak and Bea started running again, round to the other side of the ship.

  And it was as they ran that the gunfire started in earnest. A barrage of bullets and cracks.

  ‘Hit the ground!’ Zak shouted to Bea as he flung himself onto the hard metal floor of the deck. ‘HIT THE GROUND!’

  Captain Frank Jackson had led SBS units through some choppy seas. None of them, though, had been as bad as this. Deep down, he reckoned he’d be lucky not to lose a couple of guys, but his OC had been adamant. Orders from on high. ‘You can expect to find three teenage kids on board.’

  Frank had given his OC a confused look. ‘Kids?’ he asked. ‘What are these people, human traffickers?’

  ‘Drug dealers.’

  ‘Then what are kids doing on board?’

  ‘Your job, soldier, is carry out orders, not question them. Two of the kids will be British nationals. Our intel suggests they can’ – the OC had looked a bit dubious – ‘that they can handle themselves. The third kid is older. Mexican. He needs to be captured or killed.’

  Frank had blinked. Since when were the SBS in the business of taking out teenagers? The OC clearly caught the look of surprise on his face. ‘Dead or alive, soldier. Those are your orders.’

  ‘Roger that, boss.’

  The OC had nodded. ‘And, Frank?’

  ‘Yes, boss?’

  ‘Those British nationals. They’re just kids. You get them home safe, come hell or high water.’

  High water? Check. Hell? They’d have to wait and see.

  They were travelling in a VT Halmatic VSV 16 – a ‘very slender vessel’. Sixteen metres long, but only three metres wide at its broadest point. The exact composition of the hull – a mixture of carbon fibre and Kevlar, the same material from which their helmets were constructed – was classified information. But it was light and it was fast. Their target was approaching quickly.

  He checked his weapon. MP5. It was already wet but that was OK. The sea water would just drain out of it. He looked around at his men. All dressed in the same way. Black helmets cut away around the ears. Skintight drysuits under their ops waistcoats. Sub-machine guns hanging from webbing fixed to their suits.

  He felt the VSV slow down and looked to his men. ‘Prepare to board!’ he shouted into his patrol comms. ‘Covering fire in three, two, one—’

  Suddenly the howling of the wind and the rush of the waves was punctuated by a barrage of gunfire from one of the neighbouring VSVs. That was their signal to board. Their own vessel had drawn up alongside the ship now, and one of his men was extending a telescopic ladder with hooks at the end. He attached it to the railings of the listing ship in a matter of seconds. Frank looked at his men and shouted again. ‘Go, go, go …’

  Standard operating procedure dictated that Frank, as unit commander, shouldn’t be the first to climb. He didn’t like not leading from the front, but those were the rules. He watched as two SBS troopers shimmied up the ladder in seconds while the covering fire from the other boat continued to keep them safe from enemy rounds.

  Frank went third. The rope ladder swung and listed in the wind but he didn’t let it slow him down. He’d trained for this, day in, day out, after all. As he emerged above the railings, he saw the two front-runners down on one knee, one of them aiming his MP5 to port, the other to starboard. To his right he saw a group of crew members. They’d hit the deck and had their hands over the back of their heads. Now that Frank and his men were spilling over onto the ship, the covering fire from the VSV below subsided. They could take care of themselves now.

  To his left, Frank saw two figures. They too were lying on their fronts. He ran towards them. They were just kids. They’d be terrified. Knowing that his men were keeping him well covered, he knelt down where they were lying, ready to give them a few quick words of encouragement. He didn’t want them freezing with fear in the middle of a rescue operation, after all.

  He never got the chance.

  The two kids – one boy and one girl – jumped to their feet the moment they saw him. They looked sharply left and right, taking in the situation with a few quick glances. Then the girl turned to Frank.

  ‘Do me a favour,’ she shouted. ‘Next time you come to rescue us, don’t leave it quite so long, would you?’

  Cruz Martinez knew what anger – real anger – felt like. He’d experienced it enough times over the last few months. Before his father died, he’d been a mild-mannered teenager, not given to tantrums or loss of temper. Those days had gone. Now, on an almost daily basis, he tasted the bile in the back of his throat, the loss of control in his limbs. He saw the world through a tinge of red mist.

  But he’d never felt anger like this. He’d been set up. He saw that now. Harry Gold – Zak Darke, or whatever his name really was – had set him up again. And now black-clad soldiers were swarming over his ship like ants. Ants that had arrived with one purpose in mind: to kill him and his men.

  His two bodyguards had hunke
red down on either side of him. Idiots. They were supposed to protecting him, not cowering at the first sign of danger. Cruz heard a voice shouting. He realized it was his. ‘Shoot them! Shoot them! Get up, you dogs, and SHOOT THEM!’

  It was the bodyguard on his left who was either the bravest, the stupidest or the most scared. He pushed himself up to his knees and fired a burst of rounds in the direction of the soldiers. As he fired, though, the ship swayed and the rounds fell harmlessly. He didn’t get a chance to try again. One of the soldiers who was down on one knee and facing them fired a burst of his own. He was a lot more accurate. Bullets drilled into the bodyguard’s skull, flinging him backwards and showering a spray of blood and gore over Cruz’s back. He barely noticed it. The bodyguard on his right was still cowering uselessly, and the remainder of his men were also flat on the floor.

  It looked to Cruz like he would have to deal with this situation himself.

  ‘Give me your weapon,’ he instructed the remaining bodyguard. The man shrank back from his boss, but it only took a severe look from Cruz and he did as he was told.

  Cruz brandished the weapon and prepared to fight.

  The dead man’s mistake, he realized, had been to stop firing. It wasn’t a mistake Cruz intended to repeat. He squeezed the trigger of his weapon at the same time as he jumped to his feet. The automatic rifle sprayed bullets over the stern deck. Cruz stepped backwards, swinging his gun arm from left to right to left again. His men – the cowards – started crawling towards him. They should be protecting him, he raged. They would pay for it when the time came …

  He saw one of the enemy soldiers go down. A round from Cruz’s gun had hit him in the face. There was a flash of red – the last thing Cruz saw before he disappeared from the stern deck and started running along the starboard side of the ship, followed by what was left of his crew.

  Cruz shouted over his shoulder: ‘If I see any of you failing to fight, I’ll kill you myself.’

  And he meant it.

  ‘Man down! We’ve got a man down!’

  Frank was screaming at the top of his voice as he ran towards his fallen mate. He was aware of four of his colleagues advancing towards the starboard deck, another four heading to port. He crouched down by the body. His face was such a pulp Frank couldn’t even be sure who it was. He went through the motions of checking for a pulse, but he knew it was pointless. This guy was going home in a box, if he made it home at all.

  He jumped to his feet. The two kids were there, looking down at the dead man. Spray crashed over the deck. It washed some of the blood away from the face of the corpse. ‘We need to get you off the ship!’ he shouted. ‘Now!’

  ‘What about Cruz?’ the boy shouted.

  ‘Is he the kid who just killed my man?’

  The boy nodded and Frank could feel his face turning severe. No need to tell these two what he intended to do to the kid who’d killed his man. ‘We need to get you off the ship,’ he repeated.

  The boy gave him a dead-eyed look. ‘We can’t disembark until the crew is neutralized. It’s too dangerous. If they start firing on us while we’re trying to get off the ship, we’ll be sitting ducks.’ He bent down and grabbed the dead man’s MP5.

  ‘Hey, son – that’s not a toy …’ But Frank only had to see the way the boy held the weapon, and listen to the way he was talking, to realize he knew how to handle it.

  ‘We’ll stay here,’ the kid shouted. ‘I can protect us. You flush them out.’

  Frank’s eyes narrowed. He remembered what his OC had said, about the two British nationals being able to handle themselves. He nodded. ‘Roger that. Whatever you do, don’t move from this position. You see enemy targets, shoot on sight. Don’t wait for them to fire first. We’ll clear the ship and return when the targets are down.’

  ‘Go!’ the boy shouted. ‘We’ll be fine …’

  Frank ran to join his men. He didn’t like leaving those two by themselves, but it wasn’t the first time he’d had to make a difficult call in the middle of an op. Wouldn’t be the last, either. Still, brave kids, he thought as he sprinted round onto the starboard deck. Brave or stupid.

  He couldn’t help wondering how they’d managed to get themselves into a situation like this. And he didn’t see the suspicious look the girl was giving the boy as Frank disappeared.

  22

  ENDGAME

  ‘YOU’RE UP TO something. What is it?’

  Zak could tell that Bea was doing her very best not to look at the pulped face of the corpse at their feet. ‘You got rid of him for a reason,’ she shouted. ‘What was it?’

  Bea was no fool. She’d seen through his plan even if the SBS man hadn’t. He checked port and starboard, the forefinger of his right hand resting lightly on the trigger of his MP5. ‘Cruz is clever,’ he shouted back. ‘He’ll evade them.’

  ‘How can you be sure?’

  ‘Trust me. I know him.’

  Bea’s eyes narrowed. Zak could almost hear the wheels turning in her head. She started thinking out loud. ‘Michael got you on board the Mercantile because he knew it would draw Cruz out of hiding. You’re the one he wants. If we’re alone here, you think he’ll come and find us.’ Her expression changed. She looked aghast at Zak, then at the MP5 in his hand. ‘You want to kill him yourself …’

  Zak started prowling round the stern deck, looking left, right and even out to sea where the SBS’s vessels were still circling. Bea shouted across the deck at him. ‘Zak, it’s too dangerous!’

  He returned to her position by the corpse. ‘Relax,’ he told her. ‘Nobody’s killing anybody. Not if I have anything to do with it.’

  ‘Then what …?’

  ‘My cousin’s in danger,’ Zak said, his voice grim. ‘I know the man Cruz has sent after her. He tried to kill me once, and he’s a monster. The only way I can save Ellie is by keeping Cruz alive.’

  Bea looked at him like he was mad, her short wet hair clinging to her head. ‘What? Why?’

  Zak looked down at the corpse of the SBS man on the ground. ‘Because,’ he said quietly – so quietly that he knew Bea wouldn’t be able to hear him over the wind and the waves. He strode across the deck towards the railings and looked out to sea again. ‘Because he can’t tell Calaca to stand down if he’s dead.’

  The wind screamed. It was shrill. Piercing.

  Almost human …

  It was human …

  Zak spun round, and his heart almost stopped. It wasn’t the wind screaming at all. It was Bea. And she had good reason. Cruz was standing behind her. In his left hand he had a clump of her short hair and he was twisting it hard. In his right hand was his knife – Acosta’s knife, cruel and jagged. The smooth edge was pressed up against Bea’s neck, and Cruz had a wild look of triumph in his eyes.

  Zak raised his MP5. But as he did so, Cruz just pulled Bea’s head further back, exposing more of her neck.

  ‘Drop the gun, Harry,’ he shouted. ‘Over the side. You know I’ll kill her if you don’t.’

  The two boys stared at each other through the rain.

  Slowly, Zak lowered his MP5.

  ‘Over the side, Harry,’ Cruz repeated. ‘Now.’

  Zak backed up to the railings. He knew he didn’t have a choice. He hurled the MP5 into the billowing waves. Then he started walking back towards Cruz and Bea.

  ‘Let her go, Cruz,’ he shouted. ‘This is nothing to do with her.’

  ‘Chivalry, Harry? I didn’t know you had it in you.’

  ‘Let her go!’

  The Mexican teenager grinned. ‘Oh, I don’t think so, Harry. I’ve gone to a great deal of trouble to see to it that your cousin is killed. And now fate puts another girl you have feelings for into my hands. I’d be foolish, wouldn’t I, to pass up a chance like that …’

  ‘If you let her go, Cruz,’ Zak yelled, ‘there’s a chance you’ll get off this ship alive. If you do anything stupid, I’ll kill you myself.’

  Cruz’s grin grew wider. ‘That’s quite a threat, Harry Gold. Bu
t will you really? Will you really kill the one person who can save your cousin?’

  They stared at each other. Zak could see the terror in Bea’s face.

  And the madness in Cruz’s. He was going to do it. Bea had seconds to live …

  Seconds to die …

  Suddenly there was movement all around him. Round the corner, from the port and starboard decks, lines of SBS personnel appeared. Four from each side. They had their weapons aimed at Cruz. One man was shouting: ‘Drop the knife! Drop the knife or we fire!’

  ‘FIRE, THEN!’ Cruz screamed, his eyes now even wilder than the storm that raged all around them. ‘FIRE, AND KILL US BOTH!’

  ‘NO!’ Zak shouted. He ran towards Cruz and Bea. He didn’t even know what he hoped to achieve. Was he trying to stop Cruz slicing that knife into Bea’s neck; or was he putting himself between the SBS unit and their target, in an effort to stop them opening fire.

  Either way, he was unsuccessful.

  The wave that crashed over the stern deck as Zak was running was the biggest yet. It totally engulfed them. Zak was knocked to the ground. He felt himself sliding along the deck, but he couldn’t see anything for all the water in his eyes. The wave receded, sucking back into the ocean and dragging Zak with it. He tried to fight against it, to scramble up the deck, but it was impossible. He slid towards the railings, hitting them with such force that the wind was knocked from his lungs. But at least the railings had stopped him. He gripped them firmly with one hand, wiping the sea water from his eyes with the other. And then he looked round.

  The wave had scattered everyone. The deck was littered with figures pushing themselves onto their feet. Zak’s eyes quickly sought out Bea. She was holding onto the railings too, about five metres from Zak. She looked OK.

  And a couple of metres beyond her, he saw Cruz. He looked bedraggled, but he still had his knife and he was advancing on Bea once again.

  Zak sprinted towards him, past a shocked-looking Bea. Cruz looked shocked too as Zak threw himself against his former friend, sending them both hurtling towards the floor. Cruz tried to slash at him with the knife, but Zak was too fast. He grabbed Cruz’s wrist and smashed it down on the deck. The knife fell out of his hand and slid a couple of metres from where they were fighting. Zak rolled away from Cruz. Seconds later he had the knife in his hand.