The Kill Zone (5 page)

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Authors: Chris Ryan

BOOK: The Kill Zone
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Jack thought for a moment. Maybe Red was right. Report back, await further instructions. But then he looked at his watch. 04.12 hrs. Forty-five minutes until first light. They had the advantage of darkness and they weren’t going to keep that for long.
They had their orders. Eliminate everyone.
‘Get the others,’ he said. ‘Quickly.’
‘Your call,’ Red muttered, and he slipped away into the darkness. Jack peered round the corner once again. The occupants of the cave were starting to get into their protective gear. One of them even had their breathing apparatus on and was approaching the silver flight case. Jack felt his mouth going dry. Whatever was in there, he didn’t want to get close to it protected only by standard-issue Regiment digital camouflage gear.
He heard the others approach. Their faces were expressionless, their eyes narrow. They all knew what they had to do next.
‘Twelve targets,’ Jack whispered. ‘There’s a table with a metal flight case on it. Fuck’s sake don’t hit it. Me and Red will take out the lights first, then we’ll pick them off.’
Dukey and Frankie nodded, then engaged their night-vision goggles. Jack and Red took up position – Jack at the corner of the cave, Red against the far wall.
Jack held up five fingers.
Four.
Three.
Two.
One.
Their suppressed weapons hardly made a noise – just a low pop, like someone knocking on a door – but the floodlights shattered loudly as the rounds hit them with unerring accuracy. Jack was momentarily blinded by the sudden darkness, but he could sense the others taking up position in the cave mouth. By the time Jack had engaged his own NV, four bursts had already been discharged, each of them nailing the nearest targets, and the smell of cordite had already overpowered the smell of the cave.
The darkness was cut by the four IR beams slicing through the air as the men cast around. Screams and shouts of panic echoed around the cave as Jack calmly got one of the green targets – a man looking blindly into the darkness – in his sights. He squeezed the trigger of his M16 and saw a burst of wetness: a perfect headshot that flung his victim a good two metres back. But Jack was already searching out another. His beam panned left and, as he expected, found one of the targets running to the edge of the cave.
He didn’t run for long.
Jack’s round caught him in the neck, causing the man to spin round, spraying blood around him like a Catherine wheel before he fell to the ground.
And then silence.
The guys stepped forward, their IR beams pointing exactly where their rounds would land so there was no need to use their viewfinders. Mangled corpses lay everywhere as they searched under tables and behind generators. But Jack could only count eleven bodies. Either he’d missed one, or there was a survivor.
It didn’t take long to locate the twelfth target. It wasn’t a him, though. It was a her. And it was the noise she made that gave her away. You can never tell how a person will react when they know they’re about to die. Some shout; some beg; others whimper and become paralysed with fear. This was one of them. She was crouched against the side of the cave, her head in her hands and an uncontrollable sobbing sound escaping from her throat.
‘Please,’ she whispered. ‘
Please
 . . .’
That was her last word. Jack nailed her from a distance of three metres with a short burst of fire. The bullets passed right through her hands and into the top of her skull. A brief fountain of blood sprayed through her clasped fingers, but it didn’t last long, subsiding suddenly like a hose when the water’s been switched off. She crumpled to the ground.
It had taken less than a minute to clear the cave.
‘All right lads,’ Jack instructed. ‘Final check, then let’s get the hell out of here and on the blower back to base.’
They knew what he meant. Each man removed the IR filter from his torch, filling the cave with white light once again, then delivered final headshots to each of the corpses. Nobody wanted any of the targets doing a Lazarus on them.
When the unit was satisfied that they were all dead, they didn’t look back. They just returned swiftly to the mouth of the cave, where Fly and Dunc were waiting for them.
‘Zero Alpha, this is Delta Five One. Over.’
‘Zero Alpha, send.’
Jack spoke clearly into the sat phone. ‘Targets down, location secured.’
‘Roger that. Nice work, Jack. The bird’s leaving base now.’
Jack gave a quick double-click on the pressel to indicate that he’d understood, then looked at his watch. 04.24 hrs. First light in thirty-five minutes. It would take the Chinook fifteen minutes to get here, which only gave them twenty minutes until the sun peeped above the horizon and they’d be lit up for anyone with a pair of eyes. He just hoped that their guest – whoever it was – wouldn’t want to stick around.
Each member of the unit had taken up a position around the mouth of the cave, pointing their weapons out into the darkness. The cover of night gave them a certain amount of protection, but it also obscured any enemy who might decide to attack.
Jack was on one knee, his weapon engaged as he scanned the desert in front of him. Nothing moved – at least nothing that he could see. He heard Red whisper to one side of him. ‘Looks like the Taliban are still sleeping soundly. Perhaps they had a nice cup of Ovaltine before they hit the sack.’
Jack inclined his head. Sometimes silence could be more ominous than noise. After all, if
he
were trying to sneak up on someone, they wouldn’t know he was there until they were dead.
‘It’s quiet for now,’ he said. ‘Another chopper landing on their turf might be a nice little alarm call for them, though.’ His eyes continued to cast left to right, right to left, moving out in concentric circles as he scanned for anything that might indicate a threat: movement, shadow, silhouettes.
But all he saw was stillness. And all he heard was silence. The kind of thick, impenetrable silence that arrives just before dawn. And then, very faintly at first, but getting gradually louder, the unmistakable buzz of a Chinook in the distance.
They didn’t see it until it had practically landed, then they felt it as the force of the twin rotary blades billowed clouds of sand into the air, stinging their faces and catching in the back of their throats. Jack looked up into the sky through the lenses of his NV. Against the stars he saw the faint, flickering shadow of what he knew to be an Apache attack helicopter escorting the Chinook and threatening with its Hellfires anyone who wanted to take a potshot at that workhorse of a chopper. If the sight of a Chinook encouraged the enemy to grab their surface-to-air weaponry, the sight of an Apache encouraged them to run like hell.
Fly and Dunc ran towards the Chinook while the rest of the unit covered them from the cave mouth. The tailgate opened and through the dust storm Jack saw a figure emerge from inside. Fly and Dunc grabbed one arm each and hustled the newcomer towards the cave, just as the tailgate closed up again. By the time they had reached the cave mouth, the Chinook was already in the air again.
The figure spoke. ‘Which one of you is Jack Harker?’ It was a brusque voice, full of authority. It was also a female voice.
Jesus, Jack thought, thinking of the female he’d just nailed back in the cave. It’s turning into the fucking Women’s Institute out here.
The new arrival wore desert camo and full body armour. The standard-issue helmet didn’t disguise the fact that she was strikingly good-looking, even here. Pale skin, high cheekbones and little strands of auburn hair peeking from underneath her helmet.
‘Me,’ Jack said, stepping towards her.
‘All right,’ the newcomer replied with surprising confidence. ‘Let’s go. Show me what you’ve found.’
Jack looked over at Red. His friend had what could only be described as a smirk on his face; he didn’t need to look at the others to realise that they’d be finding the way this chick talked to their unit leader funny. Jack ignored it. ‘Red,’ he commanded, ‘come with me. The rest of you, keep watch.’
The men took up their positions again.
‘Do you have a name?’ Jack asked the woman. ‘Or is that a secret as well?’
‘No secret,’ she replied crisply. ‘Caroline Stenton.’
‘All right then, Miss Stenton—’
‘
Professor
Stenton . . .’
Jack and Red glanced at each other.
‘All right then,
Professor
Stenton. Let’s get the hell inside, shall we?’
The woman nodded and strode immediately into the cave mouth. Jack ran ahead of her then turned, blocking her way. ‘Keep between me and Red,’ he instructed, ‘and do what I tell you.’
‘My understanding,’ Stenton said, still walking, ‘is that you’re to follow my orders while I’m on the ground.’
Another glance between the two Regiment men. Jack grabbed her by the arm. ‘
My
understanding,’ he hissed, ‘is that you’d like to fucking stay alive.
I
go in front,
then
you,
then
Red.’
A pause.
‘Do yourself a favour, missie,’ Red murmured, ‘and listen to the man.’
Stenton’s eyes hardened, but she said nothing as Jack switched on the Maglite torch clamped to his weapon and, with the butt of his M16 pressed against his shoulder, stepped forward, lighting the way as he went.
With the way properly lit, they reached the side cave quickly. Jack stopped a few metres short of it and turned to Stenton. ‘It’s not pretty in there,’ he said.
Stenton gave him a withering look. ‘I’m not a child,’ she said, before walking past him. ‘Light the way.’
Jack gave a little shrug, walked to the entrance of the cave and illuminated the interior. Stenton looked in and for a moment her face was expressionless. After a few seconds, however, Jack watched as their guest twigged exactly what she was looking at.
It was carnage inside. Dead bodies littered the floor, their limbs contorted into whatever position they had fallen. Sides of faces had been blown away; skin was spattered in blood; thick grey brain matter lay in viscous pools around them. Caroline stared at the woman Jack had killed. Her long dark hair was matted and bloodied, her torso was mashed up, the exit wound from her skull had distorted her head and her expression was one of gruesome, unrestrained terror.
‘How many times did you shoot that woman?’ Stenton asked.
Jack sniffed. ‘Nine or ten.’
Her face hardened. ‘Why did you have to shoot her ten times?’ she asked.
Jack gave her a direct look. ‘I ran out of bullets,’ he said.
Stenton took a short, sharp breath. She didn’t reply, but instead just stepped inside, walking round the dead woman and up to the nearest workbench, where the metal flight case still sat with blood spattered over its surface. Stenton looked down at it, then around the cave in general.
‘Any more containers like this?’ she asked.
Jack shook his head. ‘Didn’t see any. But we had our mind on other things.’
‘Search,’ she replied. ‘Now.’
It didn’t take long. The cave was big, but the equipment was localised in a small area. Stenton helped with the search, and within a couple of minutes appeared satisfied that there was nothing there to warrant further attention from her. She turned to the two Regiment men. ‘All right,’ she said, pointing at the flight case. ‘We’re taking that with us. You might find it’s heavy.’ She eyed Jack up and down, and an arch smile crept on to her lips. ‘Then again, maybe not.’
It took two of them to lift it, so Jack detached the Maglite from his M16 and handed it to the woman. ‘Lead the way,’ he said.
Stenton raised an eyebrow. ‘Sure it’s safe?’ she asked.
‘Not really,’ Jack replied. ‘But unless
you
want to carry the container—’
‘Do us all a favour,’ Stenton interrupted, ‘and don’t drop that thing, OK.’
‘So I take it we’re not transporting poppies.’
Stenton looked away. ‘So you’re not just a pretty face after all, Captain Harker.’
She stepped into the corridor.
04.52 hrs.
‘Eight minutes till sunrise,’ Jack announced as they laid the container down on the sand next to one of the boulders. ‘Fly, get on the radio. I want to be on that Chinook before the sun comes up. And you can tell our MoD friend there’s no need for him to stick to his half-arsed, fucked-up horseshit about this being a poppy-processing plant.’
‘Those exact words?’ Fly asked with a half smile.
‘No,’ Jack replied. ‘Don’t be so polite.’
Fly nodded and immediately got on to the sat phone. ‘This is Delta Five One. Do you copy?’
‘How long before they arrive?’ Caroline Stenton asked as Fly communicated with the ops centre back at Bastion.
Jack shrugged. ‘Depends where they’re turning and burning. With a bit of luck, no more than a couple of minutes.’

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