by Rob Jones
“Listen, hurry up or…” Hawke paused and looked at Ryan for a second, a smile growing on his face. “Wait, you don’t think you’re Bond in this scenario, do you?”
“Well…”
“Put this on.” Hawke smiled and let it go, handing the younger man a lifejacket. “Hold your breath and the second you’re outside the sub make for the surface. It’s going to be choppy up there but I’ll be right behind you.”
Hawke slammed the hatch door and fired Ryan into the sea. It wasn’t as risky as it sounded – he’d left submarines that way many times before. It was a standard manoeuvre for naval Special Forces all over the world.
With the men working hard to force open the internal hatch, and the sub still diving, Hawke spun open the hatch door and stood well back as the pressure differential forced the seawater through the tube and into the torpedo room. It quickly flooded into the small space.
The flow velocity of the water was tremendous, so he didn’t have to wait long until the water was level with the top of the torpedo tube. Then he pulled himself inside and took the deepest of breaths as he went. Hauling himself through the torpedo tube took all of his strength but then he was clear and swimming to the surface.
When he left the sub they were at twenty-five meters which was nowhere near his deepest freedive without breathing apparatus. His record was eighty meters below sea level, which he’d done off the coast of Bermuda many years ago. Now recognized as a serious sport, freediving had a lengthy pedigree stretching back to ancient cultures when they used the skill to gather pearls or sponges.
For a trained Special Forces frogman like Hawke, leaving a sub at twenty-five meters and swimming to the surface was meat and potatoes, but the feigned casual manner back in the torpedo room with Ryan was to conceal his concerns about the young man’s safety. This would be very deep for Ryan, plus it was freezing, dark water, he had no light and a wounded arm.
Freediving was fun, but not without its risks. At serious depths the body could suffer from a variety of problems ranging from hyperventilation to shallow-water blackout which struck without any warning signs.
There was a lot to consider, including the salinity levels of the water you were diving in. Freshwater and saltwater freediving had their own challenges. Most divers had two forces to consider – upward and downward. A diver’s buoyancy was determined by the saline levels of the water, which meant that the less salt the easier it was dive, because bodies floated more easily in saltwater.
But less upward force caused by the lack of salt meant more downward force when the diver was trying to reach the surface again. In a saltwater environment it was easier for the diver to float back up, but much harder in freshwater.
Hawke knew that the Barents Sea had three distinct water masses, each with their own salinity levels. The warmer water from the Atlantic was higher, as was the colder water coming down from the Arctic, but along the coast the saline levels were lower. This made it easier to dive but harder to reach the surface, and as he and Ryan were on a strictly one-way trip from the sub to the surface this was to their disadvantage.
Now, Hawke swam to the surface, straining his eyes through the gloom to find Ryan, but all he saw was a wild, heaving ocean looming above him like a snarling beast into whose jaws he would soon be swimming.
*
Lea clung to chopper’s portside skid for her life as Trond turned sharply in the air to give Scarlet another opportunity to hit the Puma with the M2. The skid was wet and slippery in the freezing Arctic rain but her cries for help went unheard. Trond was in the cockpit struggling to evade the enemy’s bullets while Scarlet was occupied behind the noisy machine gun. Victoria’s ears were covered by a chunky pair of defenders and her eyes were clamped shut in terror. If she fell now, no one would notice for a very long time.
She made the cardinal error of looking down and saw only her Heckler & Koch MP7 as it spun down into the raging black sea hundreds of feet below her. She was dimly aware of the pale glow of the Rán’s conning tower lights as it slowly sank beneath the waves and she prayed Hawke had gotten safely aboard.
She made another attempt to pull herself back inside but Trond was climbing hard into the sky and she slipped back over the skid, now hanging on at arms’ length as the helicopter was shrouded in the low storm clouds. The smell of the chopper’s exhaust fumes wafted over her and a wave of nausea almost made her throw up, but she focussed and kept her head together.
With the fumes past now, she blinked to get the drizzly water out of her eyes and took a deep breath. Her fingers, wrapped tightly around the icy metal skid, were tired and wanted to let go but she knew that meant falling to her death. She thought of her father. He had fallen to his death too. The only difference was someone had pushed him over those cliffs and she knew she couldn’t die until she had found out who and why.
She was dragged back to life by the sound of the M2 going nuts on the far side of the helicopter and then she heard Scarlet’s voice screaming with joy. Trond pulled level and then began to descend, allowing Lea to take advantage and use gravity to climb up over the skid and clamber back inside the helicopter.
Looking through Scarlet’s door on the other side of the chopper she saw the Puma spinning around uncontrollably. Flames and smoke poured from its rear rotor as the pilot struggled to keep it in the air.
“You’re going down like a fucking sycamore seed, baby!” Scarlet shouted, and celebrated her shot with a solid-gold air-punch.
Lea moved over to her and watched as the Puma spun closer to the ground. “Nice shooting.”
“Where were you? You missed all the fun.”
Lea took a deep breath and tried to slow her pounding heart rate. “Just hanging out on my own for a second.”
Victoria opened her eyes and looked at them both. “Did I miss anything?”
*
When Hawke reached the surface a cold rush of air hit him in the face followed by a blast of sea spray. He was in a deep trough now, surrounded on all sides by towering walls of gray ocean. High above, he saw a crest of rising water which folded over and crashed down on top of him.
Seconds later he was atop an enormous crest of seawater, struggling with all his strength to maintain some kind of even buoyancy in the raging swell. To his left, he saw a massive, smoking fireball burning on the rear rotor of a chopper and for a heart-stopping moment he thought it was the AW101 about to crash into the sea with Lea and his friends on board.
Then he realized it was the Puma, and that Scarlet must have taken it out with the M2. He watched it drop into the ocean a few hundred yards away where it landed with a low crashing sound. A sombre column of smoke rose from the water but was quickly dissipated by the wind.
Fighting the power of the sea, he gasped another deep breath as he scanned the water for any sign of Ryan, but saw only the AW101 as Trond spun it around over the cliffs and headed back in the direction of the burning Puma wreckage. They were obviously making a fly-by to ensure it was dead.
Then Hawke saw Ryan, rising on a crest slightly further out to sea than he was – he looked disoriented and scared. The SBS man estimated the wave length at about thirty meters, so he got swimming as fast as he could. He headed down the slope of the water into the trough and then powered himself up the other side until he was on the same crest as Ryan, but when he got there his friend was unconscious and bobbing helplessly up and down in the freezing water. The only reason he was still on the surface was the lifejacket Hawke had given to him as he climbed into the torpedo tube.
Hawke swam behind Ryan and hooked his arm around his chest before beginning the arduous swim back to shore. A nice little rip current had started to develop and no matter how hard the Englishman fought to reach the safety of the shore, they were pushed further out into the freezing ocean.
Hawke’s mind raced with options, but then the best of all presented itself to him when the AW101 turned from the sinking Puma and flew in their direction.
“Stay with us, ma
te!” Hawke shouted as a line was winched down from the side of the helicopter. Still clinging to Ryan, he grabbed hold of the line and fixed himself into the harness. Moments later they were ascending toward the chopper.
“You missed all the fun!” Scarlet said as she helped Hawke get Ryan into the chopper. He clambered in after him and swept the water from his hair, rushing over to Ryan who was still unconscious.
Scarlet stretched Ryan out on the floor of the chopper and began to give him the kiss of life.
Lea ran over to Hawke and kissed him.
“What was that for?” he asked.
“I thought you were dead.”
“Never! But how did you find us?” Hawke asked.
“Infrared detector on my helmet,” Trond said calmly over the headset from the cockpit. “If I hadn’t been wearing this you would be halfway to Russia by now.”
Ryan spluttered back to life and doubled over on his side as he coughed the seawater from his lungs.
“You’re going to be all right,” Scarlet said, placing a hand on his shoulder.
Ryan was clearly rattled, but knew he had a reputation to maintain. Through the coughing and wheezing he looked up at Scarlet adoringly. “I can’t believe…” he began.
“What?” Scarlet said.
“That I’ve been kissed by the woman who shot the President of the United States!”
She sighed heavily and pushed him over.
“But didn’t you feel the spark?” Ryan called out.
“I’ve been more turned on blowing up a sex doll.”
Victoria looked disgusted. “Oh, how dreadful!”
Ryan got to his knees and tried to get his breath back. “You’ve blown up a sex doll?”
“I see we’re all up to our usual speeds and settings,” Hawke said, reaching his arms around Lea’s waist.
Scarlet rolled her eyes as they kissed a second time. “Is that really the best use of our time?”
“Cairo’s right,” Hawke said. “We need to launch the submersible right away,” he said. “They’ve dived in the Rán and they’ll be halfway there by now!”
Trond waved a one-finger salute in acknowledgement and turned the chopper back to shore. Moments later, the enormous military machine was slowly descending over the sea to the bottom of the cliffs and touching down on the freezing beach. The rain blowing in from the Barents Sea was cold and heavy, and reduced daylight visibility to the point that it almost looked like twilight, but none of that mattered to Hawke.
He had a mission to complete and nothing was going to stop him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Getting inside the complex was easier than Lexi had anticipated. Her first thought was to use the door she had seen ‘Ben’ exit from when she set the alarm off in the yard, but when she got there it was shut again, and locked. Clearly they knew the island was now under attack and had initiated some kind of silent lockdown.
She had finally gained entry to the place via a skylight in what turned out to be the food stores. She lowered herself gently to the tiled floor and after helping herself to a sip of bottled mineral water from the shelf, she refocussed her mind and readied her weapon for the next stage of the mission.
Her attempt to obtain any kind of schematics for the complex had failed miserably – it was as if the place didn’t exist. There were no authorities on the island she could ask after all, and every one of her foreign intel agency contacts had come to nothing. This meant that from this stage onwards she had to feel her way forward step by step – improvising as she moved silently along the complex’s corridors in search of her final target. Anyone who got in the way between her and Eden would also have to be eliminated.
She stalked down a long utility corridor leading from the food stores to what was obviously the generator room. For a while she considered sabotaging it and plunging the place into darkness, but while that sounded like a good idea at first it would not only give away her current position inside the complex, but also give her a disadvantage. The ECHO team knew this place better than she did and they would certainly have access to better night vision tech than her handheld monocular.
In the cool, air-conditioned silence of the complex, her mind drifted back to her training back in Beijing, and the monstrous figure of Shi Keyu. Shi was her boss and chief training officer, and his fondness for ancient Chinese military strategy was well-known in the academy.
“Remember, Xiaoli,” he had said. “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”
If his scowling, pock-marked face hadn’t been less than ten inches from hers she would have rolled her eyes. His endless quoting of Sun Tzu, the Spring and Autumn Period Chinese military strategist and commander, was also well-known in the academy.
Now, she couldn’t shake him out of her mind.
The time he had caught her smoking in her room and made her do a hundred push-ups. Even now she could still see the reflection of her face in the polished toecaps of his boots. The time he had reprimanded her in front of everyone after she had failed to recite accurately Sun Tzu’s five basic factors of military strategy. She could still see his bloated, sweating face even now after all these years.
She glanced at her watch – she had been on the island less than half an hour so far. She smiled and thought of Shi Keyu one last time. Shi Keyu who was dragged kicking and screaming from his Jiaozi dumplings one night to face execution by firing squad for crimes against the state. As she closed in on her objective, she heard the ancient voice of Sun Tzu as he whispered in her ear: Quickness is the essence of the war.
Ahead of her she heard whistling. She stopped in a heartbeat and pushed herself up against the wall, hiding in the shadows of a Chinese windmill palm. Good choice, she thought, but her appreciation of the plant-life was cut short when she saw the unmistakable figure of Maria Kurikova as she glided across the small window in the kitchen door and opened the refrigerator. It was definitely the Russian woman – blonde hair tied back, blue eyes, tall and elegant. Too elegant for an FSB goon, she thought. Perhaps she was descended from the Russian aristocracy.
But Kurikova’s provenance hardly mattered now. All Lexi was thinking about was how to take her out of the equation. As far as she was concerned she wouldn’t be able to have a serious shot at taking Eden out until the Russian woman was out of the way. She might look like a Tsarina, but Lexi had seen her in action and it was no joke. Her assessment of the situation was that if she tried to hit Eden while Kurikova was still standing things might get nasty.
She racked her mind thinking of possible plays, and then the ghosts returned to her once again out of the ether. Appear at points which the enemy must hasten to defend; march swiftly to places where you are not expected…
Not expected, indeed.
Looking above her she saw an air-conditioning duct grille. Standing on the side of the palm pot she pushed it open and climbed inside until she was concealed within the duct, and then she shuffled forward slowly and silently, dragging both Shi Keyu and Sun Tzu behind her.
Over the kitchen now, she peered down through the grille in the ceiling and watched as Maria finished making her sandwich. Lexi noted that she had left her gun on the couch in the sunken living area.
Big mistake, she thought. This is too easy.
Taking a deep breath, she coiled her legs up and then released them like a spring, powering the grille out with her boots and dropping through the hole behind it. The grille clattered to the floor with a metallic crash and Maria almost jumped out of her skin.
Lexi hit the ground and Maria reacted in half a second, just as Lexi knew she would. She spun around and reached out for the gun but it was too late. She had left the weapon too far away and made herself defenseless.
Lexi raised her gun and squeezed the trigger without a second thought, blasting Maria dead-center in the stomach.
Maria screamed in shock and agony. “What have you done?!”
“It’s war, Maria, and you’re dead.”
&
nbsp; Without blinking, Lexi fired a second time across the chest and Maria screamed in pain and she staggered backwards toward the fridge, staring in horror as her white shirt turned blood red. “How could you?!” she screamed, her voice trailing away.
But Lexi was already gone, running up the circular staircase on her way to the upper levels. She knew this was the location of Alex Reeve’s research center, and consequently the nerve center of the ECHO team, and aside from Eden himself it was the highest value target on the island.
All warfare is based on deception, Xiaoli said the ghost of Shi Keyu. Lexi ignored it as she climbed silently up some wooden steps and moved along the mezzanine toward the research center.
“Lexi?” Alex looked startled as she turned from the computer to face her. Her face changed when she saw the gun in Lexi’s hands. “Listen, just take it easy, all right? You don’t have to use that…”
Lexi had heard enough. An ice-cold darkness had descended over her mind once again, just like the one she had felt when she’d called the Ministry’s Internal Affairs Department about Shi Keyu’s extra-curricular activities with a woman from the Japanese Public Security Intelligence Agency. He was arrested a day later.
Without a moment of hesitation she fired the gun at Alex, striking her across the chest and upper arms and sending her flying around in the swivel chair. Alex screamed in shock, but it was over faster than she knew.
It wasn’t something Lexi wanted to linger over, so without glancing back, she moved stealthily along the corridor on her way to Eden. She’d already calculated that at this time of night he would either be in his bed or in his study, and the bedroom was her first port of call. She silently opened the door and switched on the lights, but the bed was made and empty, which meant only one thing – Sir Richard Eden had run out of hiding places.
Lexi Zhang raised her gun and stalked silently along the corridor to the final objective. Her mission’s end was behind one more oak-panelled door, and she intended to see it through to its logical conclusion.