The attackers had gone for the classic ‘blocking the road’ technique – two vehicles, both kidnap vans, nose to nose across the expanse of the single lane carriageway, thought Lyth.
Behind them, probably about fifty feet away and around the curve of the bend and out of sight, a second team would have popped up disguised as police or road repair men with barricades to stop any following traffic from getting through until the kidnap was completed. At least that’s how he would have done it.
Like most kidnap attempts, it had all happened fast and with the usual routine of the well rehearsed. Lyth became aware of bright lights from his left side, a motorcycle with a black helmeted rider pointing a machine-pistol at the driver side of the Audi A7, and then, as they had slowed to come around the bend, the motorcycle had held back and instead they had been greeted with the two vans blocking the roadway. Wolf had braked and turned the wheel, ready to position the car for evasive manoeuvres.
Lyth heard Wolf shouting into the comms that there was a contact, felt the heavy braking of the Audi, and became aware of the Range Rover, their backup vehicle, overtaking them and positioning itself between the Audi and the kidnap vans. A quick glance forward through the windscreen and he was aware of people, four at least, masked, dressed in covert black and armed with tactical shotguns, emerging from the back of the vans. This was not going to be a baseball bat and crowbar style kidnapping, this was full-on firearms and it screamed professional unit to him.
By this time, of course, Tom Lyth’s instincts had already kicked in and he was half dragging and half pushing Pavel to the foot-well of the Audi before throwing himself on top to provide body cover in the manner of the professional bodyguard.
“Stay down! Stay down!” ordered Lyth to Pavel, his hand keeping the other man firmly in place. Once his agent was low down and protected, Lyth drew the Glock 19 from the covert holster on his right hip, holding it up ready to use in case they were attacked at close quarters.
One of the attackers, tall and solidly built, fired a blast into the air with his shotgun, probably more to get attention and try to intimidate than anything else, while the other three would-be kidnappers began to move towards them in a pincer movement, trying to close their targets down. Lyth could hear Jax over the radio, counting down until the kidnappers were easily within the kill zone. Jax and Tanner were the CAT, Counter-Attack Team, and it was their job to fight it out so that the VIP vehicle, the Audi A7, could escape.
“Five… four… three… two…” she said clearly over the radio, with no raised voice and a sense of professional cool. “Go, go, go….”
The driver side door of the Range Rover burst open and Tanner and Jax de-bussed, weapons out and getting into position to the offside of the 4x4; Jax crouching low behind the rear axle, her mini dress riding up on her thighs and Tanner in business suit, tie gone and collar open, behind the protective cover of the vehicle’s engine block. Both had Heckler & Koch MP5k’s with suppressors attached, compact machine pistols that fired in rapid bursts and that were perfect for armed close protection operations, attached by a bungee sling underneath their jackets.
Tanner and Jax immediately started tag-team firing, letting the bullets fly in short three-round bursts, aiming at them left, right, left and then running fast magazine changes when they ran out of battery. Even with the suppressors, the noise sounded like a hive of aggressive mutated bees going in for the kill and the effect on the attackers was instantaneous.
One of the attackers went down straight away, the rounds from Jax’s weapon hitting him in the groin area, shattering his pelvis and rendering his legs useless. He collapsed like a puppet that had its strings cut by a malevolent child and screamed, shouting something unclear in Arabic. The other two attackers immediately jumped for cover, scrabbling to get behind the safety of the two vans, but not before one of them was taken out with a perfectly targeted burst to the head. The final attacker on the left hand side managed to get a shot off at the Range Rover, but the Range Rover was fitted with shatter-proof glass and the bodywork had bullet-proof panels in the doors. The effect was only surface damage, but the Audi was not armour-plated, built instead for speed and not a bullet magnet like the Range Rover, and it was that vehicle that was now in the firing line.
The mysterious motorcyclist had returned, dismounted from the bike and was walking towards the rear of the fire-fight at an oblique angle, hoping for a surprise attack while the SCALPEL team were distracted. He fired a burst from his machine-pistol, trying to take out Jax and soon he would be at the Audi and could wipe out everyone in the vehicle in a rear attack.
“Contact on our six!” yelled Tanner over the radio comms.
“I got this!” growled Wolf, already reaching for his personal defence weapon, an S&W MP Shield semi-automatic pistol, tucked underneath his thigh. It was his car-gun.
“No!” ordered Lyth. “Keep the engine running and stay in position. If it all goes to shit, you two bug out fast!”
“Roger that,” replied Wolf, keeping his hands on the wheel and his foot hovering over the accelerator, obeying orders like the superb SCALPEL operative he was. But deep down he wanted to be in there, doing what he knew best – taking the fight to the enemy at close quarters, just like he used to do with Delta in the old days.
Lyth pushed open the rear door of the Audi and scrambled out, keeping low. He made his profile barely visible, at an angle behind the bulk of the Audi and then started firing in neat double taps, aiming at the body mass of the motorcyclist assassin.
The volley of bullets from the Glock drove the motorcyclist back; sure, he had a faster running weapon than the Glock, but he was also exposed and out in the open and it was only a matter of time before one of Lyth’s bullets took him out. The constant barrage of sustained semi-automatic fire had driven him back behind a tree, pinning him down.
“Tanner! Punch a hole in that wall for us!” shouted Lyth over the radio. He put the last few rounds down at the motorcyclist, did a quick reload and then jumped into the back of the Audi. Wolf was already revving the engine, eager to get them the fuck out of Dodge.
Tanner immediately broke away and got back in the Range Rover, Jax covering his firing angle until the very last moment and then she too jumped in the rear of the 4x4. Once Jax was inside, Tanner did a fast reverse to give the Range Rover enough room to manoeuvre and then lined the vehicle up so that it was about twenty yards away from the vehicle blockade.
“Going in three… two… one,” called Tanner. He moved the Range Rover out at speed until he was only a few feet away, then he slowed the vehicle down and drove steadily at the apex where the noses of the two vans almost touched.
Tanner was skilled enough to know that you don’t ‘ram’ a vehicle blockade; that just causes a crash of entangled metal and locks up all the vehicles involved. Instead, you ‘push’ your way through, nudging the vehicles out of the way and only then do you increase your speed to escape out of the kill zone. This was exactly what Tanner did now with the Range Rover.
He targeted the centre point between the two vans, kept his foot steady on the accelerator and ploughed through. There was the impact and the jolt as the metal collapsed under the pressure, a brief resistance and then the two vans were gently nudged aside, leaving enough room for the Range Rover to clear the gap. It was almost balletic. Right on Tanner’s tail was Wolf driving the Audi A7 and then, in less than a few seconds, both vehicles were clear and gaining speed.
The lights from the Range Rover flashed across a dark-clothed figure by the tree-line. Lyth only caught a momentary glance at the figure, but he had seen enough of the face. The face was unmasked, in comparison to his soldiers. It was a face to remember.
Then, as the Audi drove past him, unaware of his presence because of the speed, Lyth managed to get a second look at him. Hidden behind the dark smoked glass in the rear of the Audi, Tom Lyth saw the man clearly for the first time; he was Middle Eastern, squat, solid and powerful. The shaved head and the scar down his left eye did not distract from the stamp of fury and rage across his face. If anything, they completed him. The man glared back at the vehicles and the people inside; he knew he had failed, he knew that they had won for now. In his hand was a walkie-talkie and he was screaming orders into it. He had the look of an orchestra leader or a General on a field of battle, whose subordinates were failing him at a crucial moment.
The two-car convoy increased speed, trying to distance itself from the kill zone. Then, just as they turned the second bend, passing through a small hamlet, the single focused light of a motorcycle could be seen gaining on them fast.
“It’s another motorcycle. He’s on us,” said Wolf over the comms.
“Get him off us,” ordered Lyth. They were on a schedule and he didn’t want this lone wolf motorcyclist tracking them to a secure safe house. No, he had to be dealt with once and for all.
The motorcyclist was whizzing in and out, trying to get close to the vehicles without being hit.
“The guy is tricky. Trying to ram him off the road will probably do us more damage than him. He’s just too fast on that bike. He’s like a water-bug that you can’t catch,” said Tanner.
“Use the EMP!” yelled Lyth down the radio.
“There’s a chance it will short out our vehicle, too, at this range,” replied Tanner.
“It’s worth the risk. The VIP vehicle is the priority. Swap vehicle positions,” said Lyth, once again keeping Pavel low and protected.
“Roger that,” said Jax over the comms.
The Audi increased speed, overtaking the Range Rover and leaving the backup vehicle as the tail-end Charlie, there to run interference. Jax reached into a secure lockbox in the back of the Range Rover. It was where the team kept all the usual kit; Advanced First Aid Kit, spare ammunition, surveillance gear and one or two specialist ‘toys’ that the Prism technical specialists had allocated them for this operation.
The Tactical Linear Electro-Magnetic Pulse device was roughly the size of a small video camcorder and when activated and targeted at a general area, it had the ability to ‘short-circuit’ the electronics on whatever device its laser rangefinder had in its sights. It was like a flash going off on a camera, except that instead of an image, it projected an electromagnetic pulse that ‘fried’ the electronics of whatever was in front of it.
Jax hit the power button on the side, heard the hum and then looked through the viewfinder to check that she had a full charge and that the 4K HD screen was working properly.
The motorcyclist was closing on them fast, he was riding one-handed, the other was holding a small machine-pistol and he was trying, and struggling, to steady his aim. He let off a short burst of fire but it went high. Jax rolled down the rear left-hand passenger window and got ready. Her timing had to be perfect on this; if she got it wrong, she could end up with a face full of 9mm.
“Doesn’t this fucker know that you can’t ride and shoot at the same time? It’s impossible. Fucking amateur!” complained Jax, who hated incompetence in the enemy much more than she hated them winning occasionally.
“Just get him off us ASAP in case he proves you wrong!” shouted Tanner.
“I need him closer to get into range…”
Another burst of fire. Nearer this time, it took out the wing mirror on the Range Rover.
“Do it now, Jax, hurry!” yelled Tanner.
“Almost there…”
“Jax, for God’s sake…”
She lined up the viewfinder, aligning it not on the rider but on the console of the motorcycle.
Another burst from the machine-pistol.
“Jax!”
She pressed the button and, through her peripheral vision, sensed rather than saw a brief flash of light illuminate the road in the darkness. She looked up and noticed that the headlight on the motorcycle had been doused and replaced with an inky blackness and in that moment she knew that the EMP had worked.
Suddenly, the vehicle, travelling at high speed, lost control and began to lose power and waver all over the road. It was on the third wobble that the motorcycle skidded and the driver was thrown off, his body rolling, the machine pistol scattering off into the roadside ditch. The man’s body stopped, his neck resting at an abnormal angle. He was dead; his bike upended and lying on its side in the middle of the road, one wheel spinning uselessly.
“Got him!” said Wolf, and then he and Tanner gunned the engines and sped off into the night, leaving behind the carnage of the fire-fight. The whole thing – the ambush, the fire-fight, the escape, the motorcycle assassin – had taken less than five minutes.
Tom Lyth sat back in the seat, checked that Pavel was alright, and then made safe his weapon, returning it to the holster. They would be back at the safe house in under an hour; maybe more now, as they would have to use the tertiary route because this route was compromised. He thought back to the man who had been briefly illuminated in the headlights as they had driven away from the kill-zone, the man partly concealed in the tree line. The man had a large two-way radio. The man didn’t become involved in the fire-fight. That told Lyth that the man was the field commander of the kidnap team.
Tom Lyth thought back through his mental database of faces from his career. He had always had that skill, the skill to remember when and where he had seen a person before and in what context. For a spy, it was an invaluable tool to have. He knew the face, had seen it before in his past, in another life. But that was impossible because… that man had been killed many years ago. He should know, because he had been responsible for the killing.
But that night, Tom Lyth had looked into the eyes of a dead man.