Burning Angels (42 page)

‘Do it. Keep eyes on the team. We’re safe. The kid’s safe. Give them all the support you can.’

‘Understood.’

Miles would get his drone operator to bring the Taranis low across the beach, flying repeated shows-of-force. That should drive the gunmen’s heads down. And under the shock of those low-level passes, Jaeger’s team would have to seize their chance to escape.

He allowed himself a moment to relax now. He rested against the RIB’s side, fighting off the waves of exhaustion. His mind drifted to thoughts of Ruth and Luke. He thanked God they were still alive, and that Simon Bello was too.

It was close to miraculous that they had the kid safely in that boat.

More to the point, he was the key to Jaeger’s family’s survival.

89

As they sped across the ocean, Jaeger thought about the aircrew of the Wildcat. Not a nice way to go, but at least it had been instantaneous. Theirs had been a sacrifice to save humankind; they were heroes and he would not forget. His job now was to make their sacrifice worthwhile. And to ensure that Raff, Alonzo, Kamishi and James got off that beach alive.

Jaeger reminded himself that they were good operators. Some of the best. If anyone could get out of there, they could. But that stretch of open sand offered precious little cover, and they were outnumbered three to one. He wished he were back there, fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with his team.

His mind flipped to thoughts of the orchestrator of so much death and suffering, the architect of the evil; to Kammler. Surely they had enough evidence now to nail him ten times over. Surely his boss, Daniel Brooks, would start hunting for him properly. Surely, that hunt must have already begun.

But as Narov had warned, Kammler would have anticipated it, and he would be hidden where he figured no one would ever find him.

The ringing of the Thuraya brought Jaeger’s mind crashing back to the present. He answered.

‘It’s Miles. And I’m afraid you’ve got company. There’s a fast motor yacht bearing down on you. It’s Kammler’s people; they somehow made it out of Amani.’

Jaeger cursed. ‘Can we outrun them?’

‘It’s a Sunseeker Predator 57. It can top forty knots. They’ll catch you, and soon.’

‘Can the Taranis deal with it?’

‘It’s all out of missiles,’ Miles reminded him.

A sudden thought struck Jaeger. ‘Listen: remember the kamikazes. Japanese pilots who deliberately flew their aircraft into Allied ships, in World War Two. Can your drone operator do something similar? Take out the Sunseeker with a missile-less drone strike? Slam the one remaining Taranis into it at Mach 1?’

Miles told him to wait while he checked. Seconds later he was back on the line. ‘He can. It’s unorthodox. Not exactly what they train for. But he figures it’s doable.’

Jaeger’s eyes blazed. ‘Perfect. But that means we’re leaving our guys on the beach with nothing: with zero top cover.’

‘It does. But we’re all out of options. Plus the kid is the priority. He has to be.’

‘I know,’ Jaeger replied reluctantly.

‘Right, we’ll re-task the Taranis. But the Sunseeker’s catching you fast, so prepare to put down fire. We’ll bring the drone around as quickly as possible.’

‘Got it,’ Jaeger confirmed.

‘And just so we’re absolutely certain the boy will be safe, once you’re on board, we’ll shortly have a pair of F-16s flying escort. Brooks has scrambled them from the nearest US airbase. He says he’s ready to go overt on the whole Kammler thing.’

‘About bloody time.’

Jaeger killed the call and readied his MP7, signalling Narov to do likewise. ‘We’ve got company. Fast pursuit boat. Should be visible any time now.’

The RIB powered on, but just as Jaeger had feared, they spotted the distinctive white bow wave and plume of spray heading fast towards them. He and Narov took up position, kneeling at the RIB’s gunwale, MP7s braced against its topside. It was at times like this that Jaeger wished he had a longer weapon, one blessed with a more generous range.

The Sunseeker’s sharply raked prow cleft the sea like a knife, the wash from its engines throwing up a massive swirl of white water in its wake. Those on board were armed with AK-47s, which in theory had an effective range of 350 metres, as opposed to half that for the MP7s.

But firing accurately from a boat moving at speed was difficult, even for the best of operators. Plus Jaeger had to hope that Kammler’s men had sourced their weapons locally, in which case they were unlikely to be properly zeroed.

The Sunseeker gained on them rapidly. Jaeger could make out several figures. Two were perched in the boat’s forward compartment, to the fore of the sharply raked cockpit, their weapons braced on the Sunseeker’s rail. In the seats set high and aft were a further three gunmen.

Those in the bow opened fire, unleashing a torrent of rounds towards the speeding RIB. Dale began to throw the craft into a series of tight random turns, in an effort to confuse the shooters, but they were running out of time and options.

Jaeger and Narov held their aim but still didn’t open fire. The Sunseeker thundered closer. Rounds skipped and juddered off the surface of the ocean to either side of the speeding RIB.

Jaeger took a momentary glance behind him. Simon Bello was curled up in the footwell, shaking, his eyes rolling with fear.

Jaeger squeezed off a short burst that peppered the Sunseeker’s hull. But it seemed to have no effect on the speeding craft. He forced himself to calm his nerves and concentrated on his breathing, blocking out all other thoughts. He glanced at Narov, and together they unleashed a second burst.

Jaeger saw a round strike one of the figures in the Sunseeker’s bow compartment. The guy slumped forward over his weapon. As Jaeger watched, the other gunman lifted him up effortlessly and proceeded to throw him overboard.

It was an utterly ruthless move, and a chilling thing to have done.

The gunman had dumped the body in the sea using the strength in his massive arms and shoulders. For a moment Jaeger’s mind flipped back to a moment in his past: the gunman’s form and bulk and his movements seemed somehow chillingly familiar.

And then it hit him. The night of the attack. The night of his wife and child’s abduction. The massive, hulking form and the hateful tones behind the gas mask.
That man and this were one and the same.

The figure in the bow of the Sunseeker was Steve Jones, the guy who’d very nearly managed to kill Jaeger during SAS selection.

The guy Jaeger suddenly knew with an instinctive realisation was the kidnapper of his wife and child.

90

Jaeger reached down to the kid – the precious kid – lying flat in the bottom of the RIB, where he was shielded from the worst of the fire. Simon Chucks Bello couldn’t see a thing down there, and Jaeger didn’t doubt how much he was suffering, both physically and mentally. He’d heard him puke once already.

‘Hang on in there, hero!’ he yelled at the boy, flashing him a bracing smile. ‘I’m not letting you die, I promise!’

Still the Sunseeker bore down fast. It was no more than 150 metres to their stern, and it was only the rough ocean swell that was keeping the RIB shielded from its fire.

But that wouldn’t last.

Any closer, and the rounds unleashed by Jones and his cohorts were bound to find their mark. Worse still, Jaeger was running dangerously low on ammo.

He and Narov had each emptied six mags, so some 240 rounds in all. It sounded like a lot, but not when trying to repulse an assault by a score of gunmen on a speeding pursuit boat, using two short-range weapons.

It was only a matter of time before the RIB took a catastrophic hit.

Jaeger was tempted to grab the Thuraya and call Miles, screaming for the Taranis strike. But he knew he couldn’t afford to drop his guard, or relax his aim. As soon as the Sunseeker hove into view again, they needed to hit it doubly hard and accurately.

Moments later, the sleek motorboat reappeared, its powerful form slicing across their wake. Jaeger and Narov traded savage fire with fire. They saw the unmistakable figure of Jones raise himself and unleash a long burst on automatic. The rounds cut a chasm through the sea, one that reached out directly for the RIB. No doubt about it, Jones was a crack shot, and this burst was going to find them.

And then, at the very last moment, Dale powered the craft over the crest of a swell and the RIB dropped out of view, the fire ripping apart the air above their heads.

The howl of the Sunseeker’s massive engines was audible now. Jaeger tensed over his weapon, scanning the horizon for where the boat would make its next move.

It was then that he heard it. A stupendous noise – an earth-shattering, thunderous roar – filled the air, as if a deep-ocean earthquake was ripping apart the sea floor. It reverberated through the skies, drowning out all other sounds.

Moments later, a dart-like form tore out of the heavens, its single Rolls-Royce Adour turbofan jet engine powering it along at a punishing 800 m.p.h. It streaked above them in a shallow dive, twisting this way and that as the drone operator corrected the Taranis’s flight path to keep it on course with its target.

Jaeger heard deafening gunfire erupt from the direction of the Sunseeker, as those in the pursuit boat tried to blast the drone out of the skies. He pinned Jones in the sights of his MP7, squeezing off short aimed bursts, as his arch-enemy unleashed savage fire in return.

Beside him Narov was likewise eking out the last of her bullets.

But it was then that Jaeger sensed it.

His ears caught the soft, sickening hollow crunch of a high-velocity round striking human flesh. Narov barely cried out. She had no time to. The impact of the shot threw her backwards, and moments later she’d tumbled from the craft into the sea.

As her bloodied form slipped beneath the swell, the dart-like form of the speeding Taranis struck the horizon. There was a blinding flash of light, and a split second later a deafening explosion rolled across the ocean, chunks of blasted debris raining down on all sides.

Flames boiled and seethed around the stricken form of the Sunseeker, as the RIB powered onwards across the ocean. The motorboat had been struck in the stern, and flames and smoke were pouring off the vessel.

Desperately Jaeger scanned the waters immediately to their rear, searching for Narov, but there was no sign of her. The RIB was flying along at top speed, and in no time they would lose her.

‘Spin the boat around!’ he screamed at Dale. ‘Narov’s overboard and hit!’

Dale had been facing forward the entire time, steering a tortuous course through the ever-shifting swell. He hadn’t seen what had happened. He slowed the RIB in preparation to make the turn, just as a call came in on the Thuraya.

Jaeger punched answer. It was Miles. ‘The Sunseeker’s down, but not out. We’ve got several figures alive, and they still have their weapons.’ He paused, as if monitoring something from his vantage point, then added: ‘And whatever you’ve slowed for, get moving and make for the RV.
You have to save the boy
.’

Jaeger slammed his fist into the bulwark of the RIB. If they turned back towards the smouldering wreck of the Sunseeker, in order to search for Narov, the risk of the boy getting hit was too high. He knew that.

He knew the right thing to do was to press on – for his family’s sake; for the sake of humanity. But he cursed himself for the decision that he was being forced to make here.

‘Get under way again,’ he snarled at Dale. ‘Move! Make for the RV.’

As if to reinforce the good sense of that decision, a burst of fire hammered out of the distance. Some of Kammler’s men – Jones himself possibly included – were clearly determined to go down fighting.

Jaeger moved around the craft, busying himself trying to comfort Simon Bello, while scanning the skies ahead for the squat, bulbous form of the Airlander. He didn’t know what else he could do.

‘Listen, kid, stay calm, okay. Not long now, and we’ll have you out of all this shit.’

But Simon’s reply was lost to Jaeger, for inside he was burning up with rage and frustration.

Minutes later, the airship came looming into view, the ghostly white presence descending from the sky like an impossible apparition. The pilot took her massive bulk into a perfect hover, inching her towards the surface of the sea. The giant five-bladed propulsors – one set to each corner of the airship’s hull – whipped up a storm of spray as the Airlander’s skids made contact with the waves.

The pilot inched lower, until the open cargo ramp dipped its end beneath the ocean swell. The Airlander’s turbines screamed as the pilot held her rock-steady, the downdraught whipping a storm of seawater around the faces of the two men on the RIB.

Jaeger took control of the boat now. What he was about to attempt was a manoeuvre he’d only ever seen done by one of his former commando coxswains, back when he was a young marine recruit. It had taken that guy years of training to get it just right, yet Jaeger had just one shot to execute it perfectly.

He turned the RIB until its prow was facing directly into the hold. The loadmaster gave a thumbs up from the Airlander’s open ramp, and in response Jaeger gunned the powerful outboard. He was thrown back against the helm seat as the engine roared and the RIB surged ahead.

Any moment now they would slam into the Airlander’s open ramp at full speed, so Jaeger hoped to hell he had got this dead right.

91

Moments before the point of impact, Jaeger raised the outboard engine to the point where the prop was hardly in the water, and then cut the power. The giant airship loomed above them, there was a sharp jolt as the RIB hit the ramp, leapt upwards and slammed down with a sickening thud, slewing its way into the hold.

The boat careered forward on to the flight deck, skidded sideways and came to a juddering halt.

They were in.

Jaeger flashed a thumbs up to the loadmaster. The propulsors screamed above them as they went to full power, the massive airship preparing to lift her impossible bulk from the sea, along with her extra cargo.