Agent 21: Reloaded: Book 2

by Chris Ryan

  His targets. Two people, hand in hand, one male, one female. He recognized Ellie Lewis’s colourful woollen hat, and he noticed that the male was wearing one too.

  How sweet, he thought. His and hers.

  They were looking around rather furtively, as if they weren’t supposed to be there. They stopped at the water’s edge. The male figure stood with his back to Calaca, camouflaging the female. All he could see was her hands wrapped round his back as they started to kiss.

  Calaca smiled. ‘Buenas noches, señor,’ he breathed. He aimed the crosshairs of his scope at the centre of the man’s back.

  And then he fired his first shot.

  * * *

  Zak’s radio crackled. ‘OK, son. Do you copy? Send.’

  ‘I got you,’ Zak shouted. Frank and Bea had disappeared into the Sea King. ‘How’s she doing?’

  The guy on the other end of the radio ignored the question. ‘We’re sending the harness down again. Make sure you clip yourself in safely. It’s pretty choppy up here.’

  Zak watched the rope descending. It came down much more quickly than it went up, but it swung violently again as it came. He stretched out his left arm – holding onto the railings with his right – and the harness just brushed his fingertips before swinging out of his grasp again. The wind blew it up at an angle of thirty degrees from the vertical. When it swung back again, it missed Zak’s position by at least six metres.

  But it hit the railings.

  Zak watched in horror as the rope curled round the top railing, then back onto itself, creating a messy, tangled knot. He hadn’t been able to hear the chopper up till now, but suddenly he could – there was a high-pitched, whining sound above the noise of the wind. The rope strained and went taut; the chopper itself jolted into an alarming angle, firmly anchored to the sinking ship.

  ‘The rope!’ he screamed into the radio. ‘It’s—’

  He didn’t finish. As quickly as it had become tangled, the rope suddenly fell from above, and the Sea King juddered upwards, like a stone shot from a sling. Zak watched the cut end of the rope fall down over the side of the sinking ship.

  Dead in the water. Just like his hopes of escaping.

  Calaca’s first shot was easy. Sometimes, he thought to himself, it was almost as if these people wanted to be assassinated. The round from his suppressed weapon made almost no noise as it left the barrel. Just a quiet knocking. It hit Ellie Lewis’s secret boyfriend squarely between the shoulder blades.

  He didn’t fall to the ground immediately. There was a couple of seconds, during which his knees buckled. But when he did collapse, it was heavily. Calaca imagined his victim coughing up blood from his lungs as the life escaped from him, but he couldn’t see his features to verify this. In any case, all his attention was focused on his main target.

  Ellie had turned, ready to run. She hadn’t screamed yet, but Calaca had done this enough to realize it was just a matter of time until she did.

  He positioned the crosshairs of his PP-93 directly at the back of her head.

  And then he fired his second shot.

  It was not the rain or the wind that had turned Zak’s blood to ice. It was hard, cold panic. The Sea King was gaining height. He was marooned.

  He shouted into the radio. ‘The harness! We’ve lost the harness! You need to send down another—’

  He didn’t hear the reply, because the sinking ship suddenly pitched dramatically and a wave crashed over him. When it subsided, Zak looked over the side. At their lowest point, the waves were only four metres down. Three quarters of the ship was underwater.

  ‘Say again!’

  ‘Negative,’ came the reply. ‘The winch is damaged. We have to get the bird back to base.’

  ‘Send out another chopper …’

  ‘Negative. No more heli assets.’

  Zak felt nauseous. He didn’t know what to say.

  There was a horrible silence over the radio. The Sea King hovered in the air above Zak – immense and impressive, but useless for Zak.

  ‘This is Frank, do you copy? Send.’

  ‘How’s Bea doing?’ Zak shouted into the radio.

  ‘Not good. We have to get her back to the frigate now. The seas are too rough now for the VSVs to return. I can’t risk more men.’

  A pause. Zak understood what he was saying.

  ‘You need to listen carefully. We’re going to lower the chopper as close to your position as possible. I’m going to try and throw out a STARS extraction kit. Do you know what that is?’

  Zak swallowed hard. He remembered Raf’s slightly scary description of the process … We stick a harness on you that has a special inflatable balloon on a cord. The balloon rises up into the air and a Hercules flies along with a clamp at the front, grabs the cord and takes you with it …

  ‘Yeah. I think so.’

  ‘We’re scrambling a Hercules from the RAF base on Ascension Island,’ Frank shouted. ‘ETA, thirty-five minutes.’

  Zak looked over the side. He was sinking fast. Thirty-five minutes was pushing it.

  ‘I’m going to be honest with you.’ Frank’s voice was grim. ‘It’s difficult and dangerous and we’ll only get one shot at it. But it’s our only option if we’re going to get you off there safely. Do you think you’re up to it?’

  ‘Do I have a choice?’

  ‘Not really, no. Hold onto your radio. You’ll be able to use it to speak to the Hercules flight crew. They’ll tell you what to do.’

  Zak gritted his teeth. ‘OK,’ he shouted. ‘Send it down.’

  Almost immediately the Sea King started to lose height. He saw Frank appear at the open doorway; seconds later, the SBS man started manually lowering a package on a rope. Zak wasn’t going to let this one get away. He grabbed it the second it came within reach, then pulled the package towards him and held it tight as Frank dropped the rope.

  The Sea King ascended again, then turned 180 degrees and sped off towards the horizon.

  Zak didn’t watch it go. He couldn’t. All his attention was focused on the package in his arms and the pitching of the ship.

  He prepared himself for what he knew would be the longest thirty-five minutes of his life.

  Calaca fired his second shot.

  He had aimed it not at Ellie Lewis’s back, but at her head, the back of which was covered by her colourful woollen hat. The bullet found its target with deadly precision.

  The impact of the shot flung her forwards. She landed on her front. Through the green haze of the scope, Calaca saw her left foot twitching. He was sure she was dead, but he was nothing if not thorough. He stood up from the firing position, secreted his weapon again and quickly, quietly, made his way towards the corpses.

  There was nobody here to see him. The heath was quiet. As quiet as a grave. Funny that. With any luck, it would be morning by the time these bodies were discovered. By then, Calaca would be thousands of miles away.

  The corpses were ten metres away. Five.

  Strange, he thought to himself, how little blood there was. You never could tell how a body would react to the impact of a bullet. Sometimes the flesh collapsed in on itself; sometimes it exploded in a shower of blood and gore; other times there was just the smallest of entry wounds. It looked like this was one of those times.

  Now, though, it was time to deliver the final safety shots.

  He turned to the male figure first. Now that he was up close, Calaca could see his clothes in better detail. Black jeans. Black boots. Black leather jacket. Black woollen hat.

  He blinked. There was something else under the hat. It looked like …

  Head protection.

  Calaca’s eyes suddenly blazed as he plunged his hand into his jacket to remove the weapon.

  But too late.

  The figure moved quickly, turning onto its back. To the astonishment of the one-eyed man, the face wasn’t male, but female. And very much alive.

  ‘Hello, sweetie,’ she said, but her voice didn’t sound sweet. Before he co
uld do anything else, she raised her right arm – which he now saw was carrying a weapon of some sort – and fired at him.

  Adan ‘Calaca’ Ramirez took in so many things at once.

  The tranquillizer dart that stuck into his leg just above the knee.

  The numb feeling that spread around his body.

  The lights – blindingly bright – that suddenly appeared all around him.

  And Ellie Lewis, sitting up and removing her woollen hat to reveal a Kevlar helmet. Her face was pale and anxious, but she was not dead. Far from it.

  People running towards him. Shouting. They were armed. Police? Soldiers? He couldn’t tell. He tried to reach his gun, but the tranquillizer was doing its job and his body wouldn’t obey the instructions of his brain.

  Three seconds later he fell to the floor, and darkness engulfed him.

  Zak was bruised and freezing cold. The ship was so low in the water now that even the smallest swells of the waves crashed over him.

  The STARS harness would have been difficult to fit even under normal conditions. Here it was almost impossible. By the time he had the straps tightened round his legs and abdomen, fifteen minutes had passed and his muscles were exhausted from the effort. He tried not to think about Bea or Ellie. There was nothing he could do now to help either of them.

  Activity on the radio. Noise. A voice, maybe? Zak couldn’t tell. He was suddenly engulfed in spray. By the time it subsided, the radio was dead. He engaged the pressel and shouted into it. ‘Can you hear me? Can you hear me?’

  Nothing.

  And then …

  ‘Copy that.’

  Zak’s voice was shrill, he realized, as he shouted into the radio. ‘It’s getting pretty hairy down here. How long till pick-up?’

  ‘We’re ten minutes out, son. You’re going to have to get into the water.’

  Zak looked over the fast-sinking side of the ship. He felt his muscles freeze. He’d been doing everything he could not to get into the water. The STARS harness had a built-in flotation aid, but this wasn’t going to be like backstroke at the local swimming baths. He’d seen what happened to people who found themselves in these waters.

  ‘Do you copy, son?’

  ‘Yeah, I copy.’

  ‘When you’re in the water, inflate the balloon. It’ll take about three minutes to reach its full height. Make sure the wire that attaches it to your harness is let up smoothly.’

  ‘How will you know where I am?’

  ‘There’s a white-light firefly inside the balloon. A beacon. We’ll see it. Once you’re in the water, you won’t be able to maintain radio contact. Hopefully you’ll hear us approach, but you need to be prepared for a sharp uptake. Once you’re airborne, we’ll start to reel you in towards the open tailgate. You might start to spin midair. If that happens, you’ll be disorientated once you’re on board. Don’t try to stand. Last time someone did that, they walked straight out of the aircraft again.’

  ‘Thanks for the advice,’ Zak muttered.

  ‘Say again?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  He looked out to sea again. Huge peaks. Murky troughs. To jump in there felt like madness, but what choice did he have?

  ‘I’m going in,’ he shouted into the radio. ‘Do me a favour and don’t miss that balloon.’

  ‘Roger that. Good luck, son.’

  And the radio went dead.

  Zak felt himself breathing hard. He was tiny among the waves. Insignificant. Like the forces of nature all around could crush him, if they wanted to, just as a human would swat a fly. Every cell in his body shrieked at him not to enter the water.

  But the ship was sinking. He’d be entering the water anyway. It was just a matter of time.

  He double-checked the straps on his harness. All tight. He made sure he could feel for the inflation toggle. Check.

  And then he turned, faced out to sea and waited for a wave to swell so he wouldn’t have so far to fall.

  He didn’t have long to wait.

  The sea was high. The rain was heavy. The wind howled.

  Zak filled his lungs with air and allowed himself to topple from the edge of the ship.

  Two seconds later he hit the water.

  He’d never known power like it. He immediately felt the currents sucking him down, like a hundred mermaids were pulling at his legs. He felt as if his whole body had filled with water, and the flotation aid that formed part of his harness didn’t feel anything like up to the job of keeping him above sea level. Even though his eyes were open, he couldn’t see anything in the murky water.

  It was quiet under the water. He knew the storm was raging above him, but everything was eerily silent. Zak never thought he’d want to hear the sound of the storm again so much. His lungs started to burn. He didn’t know if he was sinking because he didn’t know which way was up. And he didn’t know how long he’d been in the water. All he knew was that he needed oxygen.

  Suddenly he was above the water again. His ears filled with the crashing, rushing sound of the waves as he gasped desperately for air. He was in the trough between two waves. Each of them was at least ten metres high, and he was unable to see the ship he’d just jumped from. He felt his body rising up with the swell of the sea. A moment later he could see the vessel. It was twenty metres away. Zak couldn’t believe how quickly the currents had moved him.

  He felt for the inflation toggle on his STARS harness and gave it a sharp tug. There was a sudden hissing as the balloon packed into the harness started to inflate. It took only a few seconds to reach its full size – a sphere a couple of metres in diameter. Zak lay on his back and allowed the balloon to rise up into the air, taking with it the thin, strong wire coiled round a pulley at the front of his harness. For a couple of seconds he could see the inside of the balloon flashing white. But then he was underwater again as the wave crested and currents knocked him around.

  He was underwater for longer this time, or so it seemed. When he emerged again, coughing and spluttering, the ship was even further away and the balloon was thirty metres above him. It was being buffeted in the gale that howled all around, but it was still rising slowly.

  Zak sank again. He tried to stay calm. This was the third time the currents had pulled him down. He’d spent a lot of time in the water over the past few days, and he thought he knew what to expect. He thought he just had to hold his breath and wait until the flotation aid on his harness brought him to the surface again.

  He was wrong.

  Thirty seconds passed. His body started aching for oxygen. Surely he’d come to the surface any second now.

  Forty-five seconds passed. He could sense his pulse slowing down; his lungs and abdomen shrieked with agony.

  A minute. He was still underwater. The panic was subsiding. So was the pain. He felt woozy. Sleepy. Almost like he didn’t care any more if he lived or died.

  He felt his mouth opening. He was going to breathe in. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew this meant his lungs would fill with water, but what did that matter? He was going to drown anyway …

  When it came, it was like an electric shock. The harness tightened around him. Its straps dug into the flesh on his legs and arms. Suddenly he was moving faster than he’d ever moved before. The water rushed past him and in an instant he was out in the open air. He inhaled noisily and felt the life surge back into him. Only then did he have the presence of mind to be scared.

  Zak looked up. The Hercules was there. He could just make out the large V-shaped clip at the front of the aircraft that had grabbed hold of his STARS wire. He was rising fast. One moment the sea was just five metres below him as he skimmed at immense speed along the waves; the next it was twenty. Thirty …

  The gale-force wind meant nothing to him now as he surged through the sky, praying that the wire would hold. He felt the plane swerve. From this new angle he could see a frigate in the distance. The SBS base. Had Bea made it? Was she getting the treatment she needed? Was she even still alive?

  He
rose higher and higher. And as he rose, he started to spin. Slowly at first, so the sea around him looked like a rotating disc. But it soon became a blur as he spun faster and faster, still screaming through the air and still ascending.

  Zak closed his eyes. He had to, otherwise the nausea would overcome him. He tried to take deep breaths, but somehow it was difficult at this speed and this altitude. He was feeling weaker again. Woozier.

  A new sound. Different from the rushing of the wind. Engines. Above him. Zak opened his eyes and instantly wished he hadn’t because the whole earth seemed to be spinning. He clenched them shut again as the noise of engines grew louder.

  Louder.

  Louder.

  All of a sudden he felt hands on his body and the sharp scraping of his skin against metal. He was being gripped and pulled. The sound of engines was screaming in his ears. He could do nothing except let it happen.

  He was lying down, but still everything felt like it was spinning.

  Zak dared to open his eyes. He saw three men looking over him, anxious frowns on their foreheads. Beyond them, the cavernous interior of the Hercules – all webbing straps and khaki-painted metal. The greasy stench of aviation gas. The throb and vibration of the engines.

  Safety.

  ‘He’s conscious,’ one of the men shouted.

  ‘Hold him down,’ yelled another. ‘Don’t let him get up and walk – not till the tailgate’s closed.’

  Get up and walk? Zak was so exhausted he wondered if he’d ever get up and walk again.

  ‘You OK, kid?’ one of the men shouted. Zak saw now that he was wearing olive overalls and a large pair of earphones connected to the side of the plane by a long wire. He was screaming loudly to be heard, holding two thumbs up and wearing a quizzical look.

  He nodded weakly, and tapped the flat of his hand against the solid floor of the Hercules – just to be sure he really was safe.

  ‘Yeah, I think so,’ Zak shouted back. ‘Oh, and by the way …’

  ‘What? What?’

  ‘Thanks for the lift,’ he said.