by Angus McLean
The van’s engine was starting to whine and pick up speed. Archer followed, the Beretta up at shoulder height so he could sight properly. The driver was still putting shots down but may as well have saved his ammo.
Archer pumped a burst at the windscreen, seeing the rounds strike and ricochet due to the angle and distance. He gave it another burst and the windscreen cracked.
The driver jerked the wheel in fright, sideswiping the undergrowth on the right. Archer’s last burst stitched across the windscreen and caused it to spider web.
The van jerked again and went backwards into the scrub, the engine still whining as the Beretta’s bolt locked back on an empty chamber.
Archer let the SMG fall on its sling and drew the HK from his waistband, racing forward in a crouch. He needed to get up on this guy before he had time to react.
The van bunny-hopped backwards and stalled, and the driver’s door started to open. Archer sent a double tap his way and got to the front left of the van, leaping onto the bonnet and pumping two more rounds through the broken windscreen, seeing both bullets impact the driver’s torso.
The multiple rounds had blown a decent hole in the glass and he could see the driver clearly now. Like his mates he looked more like an international student than a terrorist. The guy still had his pistol in his hand and his eyes were on Archer, so he put a round into the guy’s face before jumping off the bonnet and racing to the door.
The driver was dead, his forehead split by a 9mm bullet, blood leaking down into his bushy eyebrows.
Archer turned the ignition off and searched him, finding only a spare magazine to his pistol. It was another Heckler and Koch USP. Archer pocketed the mag and the van keys, tucked the spare pistol into his belt and headed back to the farmhouse.
He became aware then of the guy on the ground outside screaming his head off. He was writhing and clutching at his side, his movements clumsy.
As Archer got closer he could see the guy’s legs were ripped to bits and leaking blood in a steadily-spreading pool. It seemed unusual that, despite, the open fleshy wounds in his legs, he seemed more concerned about the less messy wounds to his side. Archer noticed the guy’s legs weren’t moving and he seemed to be frozen from the waist down.
Suddenly it clicked.
The guy’s spinal column must have been severed by the bullets, rendering him paralysed from the waist down. Even though his legs were in bits and he was bleeding out, the poor fucker had no idea.
Poor fucker? No, not a poor fucker. Just a terrorist fucker who got some of his own medicine.
Archer stopped to frisk him on the way past, finding no more weapons, and left him to scream while he went back inside to check on Eva and the first guy.
She had come out of the room and was covering the guy with his own pistol. He was slumped in a large pool of blood and his face was slack and waxy looking. He was trying to hold his guts in with one hand, which was covered in blood.
Eva looked at Archer with wide eyes, and he gave her a reassuring look.
‘You okay?’ he asked.
She nodded tentatively. ‘I think so. What happened out there?’
‘Two bad guys down.’ He glanced back at the guy at their feet. The terrorist’s eyes were fixed in a vacant stare at the wall and his hand had fallen away from his wounds. ‘No need to worry about him anymore.’ He moved back into what he guessed was the lounge, where the bodies of the Somalian and the Afghani lay. No need to check them. He turned and looked down at Jessika. She lay on her side, her head lolling at an unnatural angle. No matter what he thought of traitors, the suddenness of her killing had shocked him.
‘Are you okay?’ Eva touched his arm. ‘Craig?’
He sniffed and gave a short nod. ‘The bitch is dead,’ he said coldly. ‘She got what she deserved.’
He turned on his heel and led the way outside to where the second guy lay in the dust. His screaming had diminished to a constant whimper, and he had managed to half roll onto his side. He looked up at them as they approached.
‘Allahu Akbar,’ he panted. ‘Allahu Akbar.’
‘He may be, but he’s no use to you now.’ Archer stood over him. The sun was up and he felt his head and shoulders getting warm. ‘Where have they gone?’
‘Allahu Akbar!’
Archer switched to Arabic. ‘Where have they gone?’
‘I will tell you nothing, infidel dog! Their blood will be on your hands and we will live forever in paradise!’
‘Where did they go? What are they going to bomb?’
‘Allahu Akbar! Jihadi will never betray Allah!’
‘Unless you get help you’ve got about two minutes before you bleed to death. I’m a medic. Tell me what the plan is and I can save you.’ Archer shrugged. ‘If not, you can bleed out here like a dog.’
He could feel Eva’s eyes on him. He ignored her and kept his attention on the dying terrorist. He didn’t have time to fuck about with this guy.
‘I will tell you nothing! They will all die! We must teach the Western dogs a lesson for their decadent ways!’
Archer took a step closer and crouched down. ‘Here’s the deal. We’re too late to prevent this anyway; just let us know where to go to pick up the pieces. You do that and I’ll give you a gun and let you send yourself to paradise right here.’
The guy’s eyes flickered as he processed the proposal. Archer waited, conscious that the pool of blood was spreading around the guy. It was slowly edging its way around his boot.
‘I will meet my saviour and live in paradise,’ the guy wheezed. He coughed wetly, blood flecking his lips. ‘Allah is my saviour.’ His focus wandered and Archer could tell he was on the way out. ‘I am cold… today…judgement will come…to…the decadent…infidels… West… Allah will meet me…at the gates…’ His face seemed to draw in on itself and he started to smile. ‘The gate…will be…truly the gate…to paradise…’ His eyes glazed and he relaxed into the dust and gravel. ‘Allahu…’
With that he was gone and Archer pushed himself up. He looked to Eva. ‘We need to move.’
‘What did he say?’
He frowned for a moment until he realised she didn’t speak Arabic. ‘He wouldn’t tell me, but right at the end he started talking about the gates to paradise, and the gate truly being the gate to paradise.’
‘Brandenburger Tor,’ she replied softly, and he nodded.
‘That’s right,’ he said, ‘I think they’re going to hit the Brandenburg Gate.’
Chapter 33
The wind whistling through the shattered windscreen and bullet holes in the van made it hard to hear even with the phone on speaker.
Archer was driving, belting the white panel van along the country roads as fast as he dared, while Eva made contact with her HQ. They had recovered their own belongings from the farmhouse, along with some extras left behind by the terrorists, and were blasting towards Berlin as fast as possible.
The BfV were screaming into action and GSG9 had been mobilised.
The Brandenburg Gate was the venue today for a large anti-immigration rally. Archer realised he’d been aware of it during his time in the city, without actually giving it too much thought. When he did now, the realisation made his blood run cold.
The sight of Middle Eastern terrorists running amok in Berlin, attacking unarmed civilians, would only serve to incite further violence by an already-militant sector of the community. The likely outcome was widespread street violence, rioting, looting, firebombs and death on both sides of the divide. It would destabilise the Berlin community and potentially the entire German society, which was already a powder keg of immigration issues.
The violence would spread like wildfire. Channelling resources into fighting it would leave the Germans vulnerable to attack in other areas. It could be a cyber-attack, a power station getting bombed, poisoning of water resources; any number of options could open up from a single day of street violence, and it would quickly become a feeding frenzy.
Archer con
centrated on driving, leaving Eva to make the necessary arrangements.
All he could guess so far was that it would be a knife attack similar to that perpetrated at Tower Bridge in London earlier in the year. Such an attack was extremely difficult to prevent, and caused massive panic which resulted in more injuries than the attackers’ blades themselves.
The GPS put the farmhouse near Wandlitz, about 30 klicks north of Berlin. They had been on the road nearly ten minutes now and were on the 109 highway, overtaking anything that got in their way.
Local police had been warned to be on the lookout, and it didn’t take long for a BMW patrol car to come flying the other way, throw a U-turn and get in behind them.
Archer pulled over and they got out, hands in the air, while the two Brandenburg State Landespolizei officers approached them cautiously, hands on their holstered weapons. Eva handed the phone over to the senior cop who listened intently for a few seconds before handing the phone back to her.
‘Jawohl,’ he said, ‘kom.’
Archer turned the van off and grabbed their gear from it before hurrying to the patrol car, both cops raising their eyebrows as they saw the folding stock AK47, the Beretta submachine gun, the two Heckler and Koch USP pistols and the bag of spare magazines he’d scrounged from the farmhouse.
He was still buckling himself in when the driver gassed it, bells and whistles all go, and he was pushed back into his seat.
Eva continued on the phone while Archer busied himself with the weapons. He saw the two cops looking at each other incredulously, and the driver was watching him in the rear view mirror.
‘It’s okay,’ he told them, ‘nothing to worry about.’
They looked even more surprised at his use of German. The driver swerved around a truck with a blast on the horn, muttering under his breath.
Eva disconnected the phone and accepted the pistol he handed her. ‘Take us straight to the Brandenburg Gate,’ she told the cops, ‘I’ll give you more specific details when we get closer.’
‘Yes ma’am.’
Archer checked the safety on the AK and held the weapon across his lap. He took a moment to catch his breath. Things were moving at lightning speed and he needed to get his head clear.
They were belting towards what they believed to be Ground Zero of a terrorist attack, already behind the eight ball, and the enormity of it all threatened to be overwhelming. What they had just been through, the situation they were now heading into and the potentially catastrophic outcome if they failed to stop it certainly made it one of the bigger days he’d had in the office.
The stakes were astronomical.
But despite it all, he was buzzing. The adrenaline was pumping, his senses were all peaking, and he could see everything with perfect clarity. This was what men like Archer lived for, and no matter how many times he’d been in such a situation, it never got old.
Eva was on the phone again, having to shout to be heard over the noise of the siren, talking so fast he could barely make out a thing.
When she hung up she issued the driver directions then put her phone away and sat back again.
‘This is it,’ she told Archer. ‘GSG9 are on the ground in plain clothes. My people are there. Everybody is ready.’
He nodded. ‘Are you?’
She looked at him sharply. ‘Of course. These bastards must be stopped.’
She set about checking the HK USP he’d given her. Even though they both knew it was loaded and actioned, it was always good to check. He guessed that, like most intelligence officers, she would have had some basic weapons training. He’d trained some officers back home, making sure they had enough skills to defend themselves in the unlikely event that things went really pear-shaped. Well, today was that day for Eva.
‘It’s okay,’ she said, giving him a sideways glance. ‘I know what I’m doing.’
‘I didn’t say anything.’
‘You didn’t need to. You gave me that look.’
‘I have a look?’
‘All men have a look.’ She frowned at him, her brow creasing. She was still beautiful when she was pissed off. ‘That look about the little woman handling a gun.’
‘Sorry, I…’
‘I was in the Army for three years before the BfV,’ she continued, ignoring his attempt at an apology. ‘So don’t worry that I will accidentally shoot you in the foot.’ She tucked the pistol under her thigh and gave him a deadpan look. ‘Not accidentally, anyway.’
***
Berlin city centre was busier than normal, with streams of pedestrians making their way towards the rally point, disregarding the vehicular traffic.
They quickly found themselves crawling at a snail’s pace. Despite the bells and whistles forcing vehicles aside, they were unable to push their way through the foot traffic without causing more issues.
A group of skinheads in windbreakers and jeans cut across in front of them, thumping their fists on the bonnet of the police car and shouting obscenities before disappearing back into the crowd, laughing and hollering at the inability of the police to stop them.
The agreed RV point was in a side street near the Brandenburg Gate itself, and Archer realised they would never get there in time.
‘We need to go,’ he told Eva brusquely, slipping the AK47 between the front seats and following it with the Beretta submachine gun. ‘Thanks for the ride fellas. Look after these for us.’
He forced the door open and got out, using the door to push aside passing pedestrians so they could both alight. Some grumbled and swore, jostling him, and he could feel the animosity in the crowd. It was shaping up to be an ugly day, and the sooner they were away from the police car, the better.
He grabbed Eva’s hand and kept her close, pushing across the stream of the flow, making it to a footpath and hugging walls as they cut away from the hordes towards the RV.
‘The rally starts in ten minutes,’ Eva said. ‘Cut through here.’ She took the lead now, pushing her way through a door, across a building lobby and out the other side into a different street. ‘There they are.’
Dieter and Ulrich were huddled beside a van with the side door open, with a man and a woman in black coveralls sitting at a workstation in the rear of the van. The vehicle was kitted out as a mobile base, with radio and camera equipment set up and a fold-down table for the troops to use.
Both BfV men looked up and nodded as they arrived, both doing a double-take at the physical state of the newcomers. Archer guessed they must look a right state, with cuts and bloodstained clothing.
‘This is the GSG9 commander,’ Dieter said, ‘his men are stationed around the rally. They are looking for the perpetrators, but there are so many people there it is like looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack.’
‘Tell them to focus on the fringes,’ Archer said urgently. ‘These are Middle Eastern guys; they’ll stand out in this crowd, and they won’t want to be noticed until they’re ready to go.’
Ulrich relayed the message to the commander, who studied Archer for a second before turning away and jabbering into his mic.
‘There is a general alert out for Kozlowski and his associates,’ Dieter said. ‘So far no sightings.’
Archer wasn’t surprised. Kozlowski had survived this long; there was no reason to think he couldn’t do it again.
Ulrich looked back at Eva. ‘Are you okay, Eva?’
‘Fine, thank you sir.’ She smiled. ‘We are alive; they are not.’
‘You did well.’ He nodded sombrely, looking like a big bulldog with his heavy jowls and tired eyes. ‘I am pleased.’ He turned his attention to Archer. ‘Thank you for what you have done, Herr Archer.’
Archer was about to reply when he saw a group of people hurrying across the road towards them. It was the CIA man, Rawlins, flanked by three other suits. None of them looked happy.
‘What the fuck is going on, Archer?’ Rawlins demanded before he’d even reached the footpath. ‘I just took a call from your pal Ingoe, telling me th
at one of my agents has been killed by one of his agents, and I wanna know why, and if you can’t gimme some goddamn answers I’ll be hauling your sorry ass the fuck outta here to someplace you don’t wanna go and you’ll gimme the goddamn answers whether you like it or not!’
He was right up on them now, veins bulging in his neck, his face a blotchy purple and red, dry spittle flecking his lips. His three guys hung back at a safe distance.
Archer held his ground, eyeballing the other man but remaining silent. It didn’t take long for Rawlins to lose his patience.
‘Well what?’ he exploded. ‘You lost your goddamn tongue, Archer? You better start talking or I’ll…’
‘Yeah yeah, I heard you,’ Archer replied. ‘Scary place, goddamn everything, make me talk. I get it.’
Dieter stepped forward now, his normally relaxed demeanour gone, replaced by a solemn air that was all business. ‘Stop talking, both of you,’ he said. His tone was quiet but firm. ‘Mr Rawlins, unfortunately your agent was a traitor. As you Americans would say, she was in cahoots with Viktor Kozlowski, who had one of his men kill her. It was not Mr Archer or Ms Graf who was responsible for that. She is dead and that is that. An investigation will undoubtedly follow, but right now, we have a terrorist attack to prevent. So if it is okay with you and your agency, I would like to carry on with that.’ He looked from one to the other then gave a short nod. Archer wasn’t sure, but he had the impression the man even clicked his heels. ‘I thank you.’
With that the enigmatic German turned back to the GSG9 commander and left them to stare at each other. Archer could see the blotchiness in Rawlins’ face starting to fade ever so slightly, but the veins in his neck still looked fit to burst.
‘This ain’t over, Archer,’ the CIA man hissed through clenched teeth. ‘I need details.’
Archer shrugged. ‘No problem,’ he said. ‘Later.’ He glanced over Rawlins’ shoulder, recognising two of the three suits now. It was EJ and Rico, the two SOG boys. The third guy was clearly a spook, more awkward-seeming than the two operators, slicker and softer-looking. He gave them a toss of the chin and they nodded back in unison.