by Matt Rogers
He found himself frightened of what might come. He sincerely hoped that what he’d told Ramsay would prove to be exactly what the man thought it was — the wild tales of a desperate prisoner.
A couple of hours later, as a small digital clock fixed into the wall opposite his cell struck five in the afternoon, his worst fears were confirmed.
8
King glanced at the clock.
4:48pm.
He sighed and gulped back anger. It felt like a full day had passed since the soldiers had hauled him out of the conference room and back to the brig.
In reality, it had been a little over an hour.
The resignation that had consumed him over the past week was now replaced by fury. He’d been willing to accept the consequences within his own government — but it seemed they seldom cared about what he had done. Instead they were focused on appeasing the Russians, which sent anger through him in waves.
Did Ramsay care that little about his and Slater’s accomplishments to simply hand him over when the going got tough?
As if on cue, footsteps sounded nearby, rapidly approaching his cell.
He rose off the bed frame and waited for the new arrival.
It was Ramsay.
King immediately sensed something was off. The man had lost his composed demeanour, shifting from an all-knowing superior to an agitated wreck. He was doing his best to mask it, but King saw through the façade effortlessly. The stark blue eyes darted around the contents of King’s cell, like he was scanning it for imaginary enemies.
He pulled to a stop in front of the bars. ‘Who did you piss off in Russia?’
King paused. ‘I thought you didn’t care.’
‘Now I do.’
‘What changed?’
‘It’s none of your concern. Answer my question.’
‘You seemed adamant that you didn’t want to involve yourself with it,’ King said. ‘Sure you don’t want to take a minute to calm down?’
It had its intended effect. Ramsay twitched nervously and slammed a palm against one of the steel bars. The response only served to anger him more.
‘Answer my fucking question,’ he demanded.
‘No.’
‘Don’t make me—’
‘Do what?’ King said. ‘You going to come in here and prise it out of me?’
Ramsay’s glare intensified.
‘Something’s got you on edge.’
‘Your friend Slater,’ Ramsay said. ‘How much does he know about whatever went down?’
King paused. ‘Slater scared you this much?’
‘Is he full of shit?’
‘Hardly ever.’
Then King felt a tremor of fear. Slater wasn’t the type to play mind games — at least, not during the brief time that King had known him. He felt he had a solid grasp on the man’s psyche — combat and life-or-death scenarios often linked people together in ways that couldn’t be easily described. He felt a subconscious connection to the man, which provided the reason for his sudden bout of nervousness.
What had Slater realised?
‘What did he say?’ King said, suddenly serious.
Ramsay shifted from foot to foot. ‘Nothing good. He seems sure that the Russians aren’t done with you.’
‘I don’t think they are either. But isn’t that why you’re negotiating with them now?’
Ramsay shook his head. ‘He thinks that’s a front. Stalling, or buying time, or something.’
‘For what?’
‘I don’t think there’s any merit to what he said…’
‘Yes you do,’ King said. ‘Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.’
‘He thinks they’re going to try and silence you the old-fashioned way.’
‘Not much chance of that happening with me in here.’
‘That’s what I told him.’
‘And?’
‘He seemed certain. Does he know something you don’t?’
No, King thought.
Then he reconsidered.
‘He’s more reckless than I am. You probably know that already. Maybe he’s thinking like them. Thinking what he would do in their position.’
Ramsay stiffened, straightening his shoulders. ‘Sounds like he’s full of shit. Just thought I’d check whether you were hiding anything.’
‘Not hiding a thing,’ King said. ‘But that doesn’t mean he’s full of shit.’
Over Ramsay’s shoulder, the minute-hand of the clock ticked over to five in the evening.
With a deafening rumble that shook King’s insides, the floor underneath them rattled violently, throwing them off their feet. Sensory overload struck him — condensing his vision to pinpricks, roaring in his ears, sending jolts of pain through his damaged wrist. He came down awkwardly on his back and rolled with it, taking the impact away from his left arm.
When he sprung to his feet, Ramsay had sprawled in a heap on the opposite side of the hallway. His eyes were wider than King had ever seen them, darting left and right. The reverberations from the explosion echoed through the bowels of the carrier.
‘What the fuck was that?’ Ramsay gasped, talking more to himself than King.
‘It’s them,’ King said.
He grimaced and looked the cell bars up and down. They were structurally sound, able to withstand whatever had occurred on deck. Then another thought struck him as Ramsay scrambled to his feet.
‘You need me,’ he said.
Ramsay met his gaze.
‘Let me out of this cell,’ King said. ‘If the carrier goes down, I’m a dead man.’
‘It won’t go down,’ Ramsay muttered, clenching his elbow and breathing hard. ‘It’s too big. And we have a small army on this ship. We can deal with it.’
‘You sure?’
King watched the man tear his gaze away from the cell and take off at a sprint down the hallway, still holding his arm. He disappeared in seconds.
‘Ramsay!’ King roared.
It was futile.
He’d been left to die.
With rage swelling in the back of his throat, King braced himself as another barrage of tremors rocked the carrier. Blaring klaxons burst into life, wailing and howling through the deserted sub-levels. With his good hand he gripped one of the steel bars and hoped that someone — anyone — would come across him before it was too late.
9
When the supercarrier appeared as a black dot against the grey horizon, Sergei felt his brain shift into a different level of consciousness.
An intensely aware, acutely honed experience.
Tunnel vision, in other words.
He’d experienced it hundreds of times before. Performance-enhancing neurochemicals flooded his system, produced naturally by the fear and tension. Dopamine and norepinephrine swirled around his subconscious. He knew exactly what was happening because he had researched the subject extensively. He understood how to control the sensation and magnify it in the lee of approaching combat.
The mind was a powerful tool in the right hands. He valued the relationship between his body and his brain more than anything, because it spelt the difference between life and death in a war zone.
He hadn’t needed these reflexes for the attack in the fishing village.
This time, it would be a little different.
When he landed on board the carrier, all conscious decision would be abandoned. He would rely entirely on his subconscious to carry him through the skirmish. He trusted his reflexes. He had relied on them for years — and they were only getting faster.
He gripped the controls assigned to the weapons officer tight as the pilot shot their Mi-28 toward the aircraft carrier. They had left the armada of RHIBs several dozen miles back, along with the other three Mi28 attack helicopters. The convoy would only move in on the enemy when instructions were given.
The first blow was entirely in Sergei’s hands.
He would make sure it set them up for a successful insertion.
Now came the most nerve-wr
acking stretch. With the supercarrier clearly visible — and the stretch of churning ocean between them shrinking fast — there was no doubt as to the approaching chopper’s intentions. If the machine in the footwell didn’t work as the old man intended, Sergei would witness heat-seeking missiles fire from the armaments along the warship.
Seconds later, he would die in an explosion of hellfire.
But that didn’t happen.
He flashed a glance at the heavy black box and sent a silent thanks to his employer for holding up his end of the bargain.
Now Sergei would hold up his own.
There were sixteen Ataka missiles divided across the two racks — one underneath each wing. The high-explosive anti-tank warheads on each missile would cause devastation to the targets he selected.
He only had one area in mind.
‘Get ready,’ the pilot said.
The man’s voice audibly shook, terrified of what might soon occur.
Sergei felt the opposite.
He couldn’t wait.
They were close enough to make out individual jets on the vast upper deck of the supercarrier. The ship dwarfed Sergei’s chopper, large enough to sit an entire town on its sweeping deck. There were at least thirty aircraft situated around the runway. On the right-hand side of the carrier, an enormous communications and viewing tower speared into the sky, broad enough to hold a hundred men.
It was the nerve centre of the ship. Sergei imagined all the juicy electronics and defensive systems resting within the tower’s walls. Destroy it, and the entire warship would be thrown into anarchy.
He locked on with the Ataka missiles, took a deep breath, acknowledged that this was the turning point and there would be no going back…
…and fired.
A single warhead shot out of each rack. The pair of high-explosive missiles shot through the gloom. Sergei watched the two pinpoints of light spear across the sea, through the sheets of falling rain, and slam home in the mid-levels of the control tower.
The resulting blast lit up the surrounding area like a furious beacon. A pulse-pounding wall of debris burst out of the tower, laced with a wall of fire. Sergei almost shielded his eyes from the intense light, but there wasn’t time. The tower was enormous — most of the levels would have been unaffected by the strike. The blow had been devastating in its intensity — yet in the grand scheme of things, it would act as an annoying itch against the supercarrier as a whole.
He locked onto a row of observation windows a few levels higher and unleashed another pair of missiles.
More destruction. The Mi-28 came to a hover a few hundred feet away from the carrier. From here, Sergei faced off with the watchtower, targeting the most structurally vulnerable sections. He let another pair of missiles go, then another.
By the time all sixteen had slammed home within the tower, it had become a smoking, smouldering wreck.
Entire levels burned. Debris cascaded down from the top of the tower. With a groan that resonated across the deck, the lower face of the structure collapsed. Steel alloy snapped from weaker restraints and littered the runway below.
From the sky, Sergei watched U.S. Navy personnel flee from the mouth of the tower. Others raced across the deck in all directions, appearing as scattering insects from this height. He felt his blood racing. The damage to the control tower was horrendous. They were panicked, taken off-guard.
‘Land!’ he roared.
He sensed an opportunity and was determined to capitalise on it. The pilot dipped the nose of the Mi-28 and Sergei felt his stomach drop into his feet. He snatched the satellite phone out of the footwell and thumbed a button on its side. It instantly connected him to a multitude of receivers in the convoy they’d left behind.
‘Successful!’ he yelled, his focus laser-sharp, in full operational mode. ‘Move in, full speed.’
As the vast and empty runway rushed up to meet the chopper, Sergei hardened his nerves. They were a long way from a successful mission — even though the first step had been executed flawlessly, the tower was only a single facet of the supercarrier. He couldn’t deny that the structure was enormous, likely crawling with hundreds of U.S. Navy troops and personnel.
There would be many experienced soldiers on board.
Not to mention the expertise of the man they were hunting in the first place. The mysterious American had single-handedly decimated everyone his employers had sent after him in Russia. He would pose an interesting difficulty.
Good, Sergei thought.
It was the Russian mentality to welcome and conquer challenges. It would only take one well-placed bullet to silence the man forever, and then Sergei would live out his days in unimaginable luxury. That was why he had thrived in this career and the rest of his family had rotted away into nothingness in the slums of Demidov — because he was willing to embrace risk.
He felt nothing but disgust for ever being associated with those miserable, abusive peasants.
He would succeed today, and dedicate it to them.
The storm howling across the ocean quashed most of the blaze that had kicked up in the aftermath of the missile strikes. When the Mi-28 descended to just a few feet above the runway, Sergei switched from controlling the empty missile racks to wielding the autocannon fixed to the underside of the chopper.
The ammunition that he’d requested be fed into the autocannon were armour-piercing, fin-stabilised, discarding sabot. The long, thin rounds could tear through almost any armour due to the kinetic energy built up during the flight.
An antidote to a reinforced aircraft carrier, for example.
He unleashed a storm of gunfire upon the runway. The rounds sliced between and through U.S. troops fleeing from the control tower. He worked his way across the open space, bombarding and disabling almost a dozen fighter jets resting idly on the carrier. He didn’t take any time to admire the havoc he had wreaked.
As soon as the autocannon clicked dry, he snatched up his SR-3 Vikhr assault rifle and threw the cockpit door open.
‘Now,’ he yelled above the sudden roar of noise.
The pilot touched down on solid ground. Sergei swung out of the cockpit, soaked to the bone in a split second by the howling wind and sheets of rain. He jammed a foot into the groove on the side of the chopper and leapt off the aerial beast.
His boots touched down onto the runway. A jolt of mental electricity crackled through him, stimulating his senses. He was on the aircraft carrier. The mission was alive.
He glanced out at the darkening skies and the three identical Mi-28s powering toward the carrier, ready to inflict a barrage of damage. He smiled grimly. In the lowlight, he thought he could make out the eight RHIBs moving in formation, tackling the treacherous waves with all the bravado of elite Russian paramilitary forces.
They would soon rappel aboard.
He gripped the Vikhr rifle tighter and charged at the flaming control tower.
10
Slater careered into the opposite wall of his cell as a series of muffled blasts rocked the carrier. He heard and felt the intense vibrations above his head. Then the sharp crack of armour-piercing rounds punching through steel echoed down through the lower corridors.
His mind moved clinically from conclusion to conclusion.
A United States Navy vessel is under attack…
The ramifications were inconceivable. Slater pushed the thought of what would happen next from his mind and focused on getting out of his cell.
Claustrophobia set in all at once, drawing sweat from his pores. He rarely got nervous — even in the midst of a firefight — but something about being confined to a tiny space in the bottom of a warship that might soon be sinking to the bottom of the ocean set him on edge.
He paced across the cell, wedging his head between the bars, craning his neck down both ends of the corridor in an attempt to locate help.
Dead silence in these parts. Just the chaos unfolding above deck.
Then frantic movement. Off to the left. In a conn
ecting corridor, people were running…
‘Hey!’ Slater roared like his life depended on it — which it did. ‘In here!’
The three syllables cut through the quiet like a knife. For a moment, he thought his efforts had gone to waste. There was no response from the direction he’d heard the noise.
Suddenly, a bulky African-American man came tearing around the corner, eyes wide, dressed in Navy fatigues and clutching a standard-issue M4 assault rifle.
‘Holy shit,’ he breathed as he noticed Slater in the cell.
‘Did you know I was here?’ Slater said.
‘There’s been rumours floating around the ship. This area’s off-limits to anyone who doesn’t have clearance.’
‘I’m Will.’
‘Derek.’
‘You going to let me out?’
Derek hesitated. As he did, another blast rocked the sub-levels, shaking the walls and threatening to throw Slater off his feet. From the upper levels came an outpouring of frantic commands, muffled and panicked.
‘Uh…’ Derek muttered, flashing a glance in either direction.
Slater pointed a finger at the roof. ‘You hear that, brother? I’m one of you. You need my help. I don’t know what the hell’s going on, but—’
‘They’re after you, aren’t they?’ Derek said.
‘Not me,’ Slater said. ‘My friend.’
‘Where’s your friend?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I’ll get discharged if I let you out.’
‘You’ll get killed if you don’t.’
‘Who are you, anyway?’
‘One of you,’ Slater repeated. ‘You got kids?’
A slight nod.
‘Let me out and I’ll make sure not a single person gets in the way of them seeing their dad again.’
It tipped Derek over the edge. He sprinted back in the opposite direction and returned a few seconds later with a ring of keys he must have fetched from an adjoining room. He worked through the five options on the keyring methodically, his hands shaking.