Burning Angels

by Bear Grylls

  ‘Drop your weapon!’ Jaeger repeated. ‘Drop the bloody gun!’

  He held the SIG before him double-handed and tight to his body: the silencer tended to force the gases from the barrel back into the shooter’s face, so it was crucial to keep as firm a stance as possible in order to dampen the kickback. He had the bad guy pinned in his sights, the pistol’s hammer was back and his index finger was on the trigger – yet still he couldn’t take the shot. In the faint light he couldn’t be certain of his aim, the bulky gloves making the shot doubly difficult.

  The bad guy had his own pistol jammed in Leticia’s throat.

  Stalemate.

  Jaeger felt Narov move up on his shoulder. She too had her long-barrelled P228 in the aim. Her hands remained rock solid: steady and ice cool as always. She moved a step ahead of him, and he flicked his gaze across to her. No response. Not the hint of a reaction. She didn’t break eye contact with the iron sights of the SIG.

  But there was something very different about her profile now.

  Narov had ripped off her respirator, leaving it hanging on its straps, and slipped on a pair of AN/PVS-21 night vision goggles. They lit up her features with a fluorescent green alien glow, and she had also pulled off her gloves.

  For a horrible moment Jaeger knew exactly what she was about to do.

  He reached out a hand to try to stop her. He was too late.

  Pzzzt, pzzzt, pzzzt!

  Narov had pulled the trigger.

  She’d taken the shot.

  9

  The standard military round for the 9mm P228 weighs in at 7.5 grams. The three subsonic bullets that Narov had unleashed were each two grams heavier. Travelling one hundred metres per second slower, it still took them only a fraction of an instant to bite.

  They tore into the gunman’s face, driving him backwards and over the edge of the roof in a death plunge. It was incredible shooting. But as he fell, his arm remained locked around the woman’s neck.

  With a piercing scream, both figures disappeared from view.

  The drop from the roof was a good fifteen metres. Jaeger let out a savage curse. Bloody Narov!

  He turned and raced for the trapdoor. As he thundered down the ladder, the Kolokol-1 swirled around his knees like a ghostly fog. He dropped down the last of the metal rungs, tore along the corridor, then hammered down the stairway, vaulting bodies as he went. He raced out through the shattered doorway, turned right and sprinted around the corner of the building, coming to a breathless halt where two figures lay in a crumpled heap.

  The gunman had perished instantly as a result of three shots to the head, and it looked as if Leticia’s neck had been broken by the fall.

  Jaeger cursed again. How could it all have gone so wrong so quickly? He knew the answer pretty much instantly: it was Narov’s trigger-happy, dumb-ass attitude.

  He bent over Leticia’s crumpled form. She lay face down, unmoving. He placed a hand on her neck, checking for a pulse. Nothing. He shuddered. He could barely believe it: the body was still warm, but she was dead, just as he had feared.

  Narov appeared beside him. Jaeger glanced up, eyes blazing. ‘Nice bastard work. You just—’

  ‘Take a closer look,’ Narov’s voice cut in. It had the characteristic cold, flat, emotionless ring to it – the one that Jaeger found so disconcerting. ‘A proper look.’

  She reached forward, grabbed the fallen figure by the hair and jerked the head roughly backwards. No respect, not even for the dead.

  Jaeger stared at the ashen features. It was a Latino woman all right, but it wasn’t Leticia Santos.

  ‘How the—’ he began.

  ‘I am a woman,’ Narov cut in. ‘I recognise another woman’s posture. Her gait. This one – it wasn’t Leticia’s.’

  For a moment Jaeger wondered whether Narov felt even the slightest remorse for having killed this mystery captive, or at least for taking the shot that had sent her plunging to her doom.

  ‘One more thing,’ Narov added. She reached inside the woman’s jacket and fished out a pistol, holding it up to Jaeger. ‘She was a member of their gang.’

  Jaeger gawped. ‘Jesus. The drama on the roof. It was all an act.’

  ‘It was. To draw us in.’

  ‘How did you know?’

  Narov turned her blank gaze upon Jaeger. ‘I saw a bulge. A gun-shaped bulge. But mostly – instinct and intuition. A soldier’s sixth sense.’

  Jaeger shook his head to clear it. ‘But then – where the hell’s Leticia?’

  With a sudden flash of inspiration he yelled into his radio: ‘Raff!’ The big Maori had remained in the target house, checking the survivors and looking for clues. ‘Raff! You got Vladimir?’

  ‘Yeah. Got him.’

  ‘Can he talk?’

  ‘Yeah. Just.’

  ‘Right. Bring him here.’

  Thirty seconds later Raff emerged from the building with a figure thrown across his massive shoulders. He dumped the man at Jaeger’s feet.

  ‘Vladimir – or so he claims.’

  The leader of the kidnap gang showed the unmistakable symptoms of a Kolokol-1 attack. His heart rate had slowed to a perilously low level, as had his breathing, his muscles going strangely slack. His skin was clammy and his mouth dry.

  He’d just been hit by the first waves of dizziness, which meant that vomiting and seizures would quickly follow. Jaeger needed to get some answers, before the guy was rendered beyond any use. He whipped a syringe out of his breast pouch and held it before the man’s eyes.

  ‘Listen good,’ he announced, his voice reverberating through the mask’s voice-projection system. ‘You’ve been hit by sarin,’ he lied. ‘Know much about nerve agents? Horrible way to die. You’ve only got a few minutes left.’

  The man’s eyes rolled in terror. Clearly he understood enough English to get the gist of what Jaeger was saying.

  Jaeger waved the syringe. ‘You see this? Compoden. The antidote. You get this, you live.’

  The man thrashed about, trying to reach for the syringe.

  Jaeger shoved him with his foot. ‘Right, answer the following question. Where is the hostage, Leticia Santos? You get the injection in exchange for an answer. If not, you’re dead.’

  The man was twitching violently now, saliva dribbling from his nose and mouth. Yet somehow he raised a shaking hand and pointed back into the villa.

  ‘Basement. Under rug. In there.’

  Jaeger raised the needle and plunged it into the man’s arm. Kolokol-1 requires no antidote and the syringe contained a harmless shot of saline solution. A few minutes in the open air would be enough to ensure his survival, though it would take him many more weeks to fully recover.

  Narov and Jaeger headed inside, leaving Raff to keep tabs on Vladimir. Back in the basement, Jaeger’s torch revealed a bright Latino-style rug laid across the bare concrete floor. He scuffed it aside, uncovering a heavy steel trapdoor. He tugged at the handle, but it didn’t budge. It had to be locked from the inside.

  He dug out a shaped explosive charge from his rucksack and unrolled it, exposing the sticky strip, then chose a spot at the back of the trapdoor and taped the charge along the crack.

  ‘Soon as the charge blows, get the gas in,’ he announced.

  Narov nodded and readied a Kolokol-1 grenade.

  They took cover. Jaeger triggered the fuse, and instantaneously there was a sharp explosion, a thick cloud of smoke and debris billowing through the air. The trapdoor was now a blasted ruin.

  Narov lobbed the gas canister into the smoke-filled interior. Jaeger counted down the seconds, allowing the gas to take hold before lowering his frame through and letting himself drop. He hit the deck, taking the impact on his knees, and immediately had his gun in the aim, sweeping the room with the flashlight attached to the weapon. Through the thick fog of gas in the air he could see two figures lying on the floor, comatose.

  Narov dropped in next to him and Jaeger swept his torch over the two unconscious men. ‘Check them.�
��

  As Narov went to do so, he slid around the wall towards the back of the room, where there was a small alcove containing a heavy wooden chest. He reached out with his gloved hand and pulled at the handle, but the chest was locked.

  Screw searching for the key.

  He placed both hands on the handle and a foot against the front, tensed his shoulder muscles and yanked with all his might. With a snapping of wood the lid came away from its hinges. Jaeger threw it to one side and flashed his torch inside.

  In the depths of the chest lay a large formless bundle wrapped in an old sheet. He reached in and heaved it up, feeling the distinctive weight of a human body inside, then lowered it gently to the floor. When he peeled away the sheet, he found himself gazing into Leticia Santos’s face.

  They’d found her. She was unconscious, and by the looks of her ravaged features Vladimir and his crew had put her through hell these past few days. Jaeger didn’t even want to think what they had done to her. But at least she was alive.

  Behind him, Narov was checking the second body, just to make sure he was dead to the world. Like many of Vladimir’s gunmen, this one was wearing body armour; no doubt about it, they had been a serious bunch of operators.

  But as she rolled the cumbersome figure on to his back, her flashlight glinted on something that had been left lying beneath him on the floor. It was spherical and metallic, about the size of a man’s fist, its outer surface segmented into scores of tiny squares.

  ‘GRENADE!’

  Jaeger whirled about, taking in the threat in a matter of instants. The gunman had set a trap. Believing himself to be dying, he’d pulled the pin on a grenade and lain himself on top of it, keeping the clip in place with his own body weight.

  ‘TAKE COVER!’ Jaeger yelled, scooping Leticia up and diving for the shelter of the alcove.

  Ignoring him completely, Narov slammed the figure back down on to the grenade, throwing herself on top of him to shield herself from the explosion.

  There was a massive, searing detonation. Narov was catapulted into the air by the blast, the force of which hurled Jaeger further into the alcove, his head smashing against the wall.

  A bolt of agony shot through him . . . and seconds later his whole world went black.

  10

  Jaeger turned left, taking the exit leading into London’s Harley Street, one of the city’s most exclusive districts. Three weeks had passed since their Cuban mission, and he was still stiff and in pain from the injuries he’d suffered in the villa, but his blackout had been only momentary: his mask had saved his head from worse injury.

  It was Narov who had taken the real pounding. In the enclosed environment of the cellar, she’d had no option but to dive on the grenade. She’d used the gunman’s bulk, plus his body armour, to shield them from the blast, allowing Jaeger an instant to get Leticia into some cover.

  Jaeger came to a halt opposite the Biowell Clinic, tucking his Triumph Tiger Explorer into one of the free parking places reserved for motorcycles. The Explorer was fast through the traffic, and he rarely failed to find a vacant parking space. It was one of the joys of navigating the city on two wheels. He shrugged off his battered Belstaff jacket, stripping down to his shirtsleeves.

  Spring was in the air, the leafy plane trees that lined London’s streets bursting into leaf. If he had to be in the city – as opposed to the open wild of the countryside – this was about his favourite time of year to be here.

  He’d just got news that Narov was conscious again and had eaten her first solid meal. In fact the surgeon had even mentioned the possibility of releasing her from his care sometime soon.

  No doubt about it, Narov was tough.

  Getting off that Cuban island had proved something of a challenge. Having come to after the grenade blast, Jaeger had stumbled to his feet and hoisted both Narov and Leticia Santos out of the cellar. Then he and Raff had carried the two women out of the gas-choked building, making their getaway through the villa grounds.

  The assault had turned very noisy very fast, and Jaeger didn’t know who else on that island might have heard the gunfire. The alarm had most likely been raised, and their priority was to get the hell out of there. Vladimir and his lot would be left to explain it all to the Cuban authorities.

  They’d headed for the nearby dock, where the kidnappers kept an ocean-going rigid inflatable boat. They’d loaded Narov and Santos aboard, fired up the RIB’s powerful twin 350-horsepower engines and headed east towards the British territory of the Turks and Caicos Islands, a 180-kilometre ride across the intervening stretch of ocean. Jaeger knew the governor of the islands personally, and he’d be expecting them.

  Once they hit the open sea, Jaeger and Raff had stabilised Narov, stemming her bleeding. They’d laid her in the recovery position, making her and Leticia comfortable at the back of the RIB, cushioned by a pile of lifejackets.

  That done, they’d gone about ditching the bulk of their kit. Weapons, CBRN suits, respirators, explosives, Kolokol-1 canisters – anything that might link back to the mission – had all been dumped overboard.

  By the time they’d made landfall, there was little left to associate them with any military action. They had the appearance of four civilian pleasure-boaters who had run into a little trouble at sea.

  They’d made sure they’d left no trail to follow back on the island, gathering up the used Kolokol-1 canisters. All that was left behind was a few dozen untraceable 9mm casings. Even their footprints had been masked by their CBRN overboots. There had been CCTV cameras in the villa, but once Raff had fried the electric circuitry, there had been no power. In any case, Jaeger would challenge anyone to ID him and his team through their respirators.

  All that remained was their three parachutes, and even they should drift out to sea with the prevailing tides.

  Any way Jaeger looked at it, they were clean.

  As they’d powered across the calm, night-dark ocean, he’d spared a thought for the fact that he was still alive; that all his team were. He’d felt that warm buzz – that incredible rush – of entering a deadly kill zone and surviving.

  Life never seemed more real than in the moments after it had very nearly been taken away from you.

  Perhaps because of that, an image had come unbidden into his mind. Of Ruth – dark-haired, green-eyed, with fine, almost delicate features, an air of Celtic mystery about her; of Luke – eight years of age and even then the spitting image of his father.

  Luke would be eleven now, his twelfth birthday just a few months away. He was a July baby, and they’d always managed to celebrate his birthday somewhere magical, for it fell midway through the summer holidays.

  Jaeger spooled through the birthday memories in his mind: carrying a two-year-old Luke across the Giant’s Causeway on Ireland’s wild west coast; surfing off the Portuguese beaches when Luke was six; trekking through the snowy wastes of Mont Blanc when he was eight.

  But after that there was just a sudden, empty blackness . . . a chilling loss that had lasted for three long years. Each of those missing birthdays had been sheer hell, and doubly so since whoever had kidnapped his wife and son had started to torture Jaeger remotely with images of their captivity.

  He had been emailed photos of Ruth and Luke in chains, kneeling at the feet of their captors, their faces gaunt and haunted, their gazes red-rimmed and plagued by nightmares.

  To know that they were alive and being held somewhere in utter, abject misery and despair had driven Jaeger to the edge of madness. It was only the hunt – the promise of their rescue – that had brought him back from the brink.

  With Raff manning the RIB’s engines, Jaeger had navigated across the night-dark ocean using a portable GPS unit. With his free hand he’d unlaced one boot and removed something from beneath the insole.

  He’d flashed his head-torch across it briefly, his eyes lingering on the faces that stared back at him from the tiny, battered photo – one that he carried on every mission, no matter what or where it might b
e. It had been taken on their last family holiday – a safari trip to Africa – and showed Ruth wrapped in a bright Kenyan sarong, a suntanned Luke in shorts and a SAVE THE RHINO T-shirt standing proudly at her side.

  As the RIB had cut through the night sea, Jaeger had said a short prayer for them, wherever they might be. In his heart he knew they were still alive, and that the Cuban mission had brought him one step closer to finding them. While searching the villa, Raff had grabbed an iPad and some computer drives, stuffing them into his backpack. Jaeger hoped they might yield vital clues.

  When the RIB had made landfall at the Turks and Caicos capital, Cockburn Town, calls had been made from the governor’s residence; strings pulled. Leticia and Narov had been airlifted out of there direct to the UK, on a private jet equipped with state-of-the-art medical facilities.

  The Biowell Clinic was an exclusive private hospital. Patients tended to have few questions asked of them, which was convenient when you had two young women suffering from Kolokol-1 poisoning, and one peppered with fragments of shrapnel.

  When the grenade had exploded a scattering of steel splinters had struck Narov, piercing her suit, hence the Kolokol-1 poisoning. But the long ride in the RIB and the fresh sea air had helped to blow the worst of the toxins away.

  Jaeger found Narov in her hospital room, propped against a pile of spotless pillows. Sunlight streamed in through the partially open window.

  All things considered, she was looking remarkably well. A little pinched and pale, perhaps. Heavy rings around the eyes. She still sported the odd bandage where the shrapnel had hit her. But just three weeks after the attack, she was well on the road to recovery.

  Jaeger took the seat beside her bed. Narov didn’t say anything.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ he prompted.

  She didn’t so much as glance at him. ‘Alive.’

  ‘Gives a lot away,’ Jaeger grumbled.

  ‘Okay, how is this? My head hurts, I’m bored shitless, and I’m desperate to get out of here.’