The growl came from Carter’s six o’clock. From somewhere beyond the front of the industrial unit. What sounded like a pack of approaching racing cars. Carter heard at least two of them. Getting louder as they cannoned towards the stronghold. Followed in the next moment by the scream of car tyres skidding across the asphalt, vehicles jerking to a halt. The thud of car doors slamming shut. Voices shouting at one another.
The temperature in the room went sub-zero.
Vann glanced over at the workbench. The laptop screen. Carter looked in the same direction. So did Ramsey. The main window displayed a live video feed in high-res colour. Carter recognised the scene at once. The front of the estate.
Two black Mercedes-Benz G-Wagons had stopped outside the stronghold, 63 AMGs. Chrome-edged SUVs with side exhaust pipes and wheels big enough to fit a monster truck. They were maybe seventy metres from the entrance. Figures were pouring out of the sides of both wagons.
Eight of them.
All armed with AK-47s.
On the screen, five of the gunmen peeled off from the main group and started scurrying down the side of the building. Moving round to the rear.
‘The Tajiks,’ hissed Ramsey. ‘Shit. They’re on to us.’
Vann shook his head in disbelief. ‘Not fucking possible. They don’t know about this place. They’ve never been here before.’
Ramsey shot him an accusing look. His face was white with rage. ‘They must have followed your man here. This is all your fault, you fool.’
Vann glared darkly at him. Then he nodded at Carter. ‘Geordie, use the GM-94. Take them fuckers coming round the back. We’ll deal with the three guys at the front. Move.’
There was no time to lose. No time to think.
Carter knew he had no choice but to fight with Vann and Ramsey. The Tajiks were unlikely to distinguish between Carter and his two captors. They had rocked up for one purpose. To avenge their murdered friends.
If they overrun this place, they won’t spare me.
Fight, or die.
Vann was already springing into action as the words left his mouth. He raced over to the workbench. Chucked one of the AK-47s at Ramsey and grabbed a second rifle for himself. Then they sprinted off towards the windows either side of the lowered roller shutter.
At the same time Carter snatched up the Russian grenade launcher, plus a pouch of three 43 x 30 mm thermobaric rounds. Otherwise known as the lung-suckers. Principally designed for use in room-to-room combat, because the rounds produced almost no fragmentation. They packed enough of a punch to shred a lightly armoured vehicle, by generating extreme levels of heat and overpressure. The resulting explosion consumed all the oxygen in the air, creating a deadly vacuum that could suck a person’s lungs out or rupture their vitals.
Carter picked up his Grach, jammed it into his pancake holster, then dashed across the unit towards the door at the rear. Behind him, the thunderlike crack of gunfire split the air as Vann and Ramsey started firing through the windows at the three gangsters attacking the front of the stronghold. The glass panes exploded in a torrent of broken shards. At once the enemy started returning fire. Bullets whipped through the openings, striking against the front cab of the truck and slapping into the brickwork, chewing up the mortar.
One round struck the fire extinguisher bracketed to the rear wall. A cloud of white hissed out of the pressurised container in a furious spray, coating the wall in foam. Carter hurried past it, hit the back door and wrenched it open. The door opened out to an asphalt yard about half the size of a basketball court, enclosed on three sides by larger warehouse buildings. There was a skip piled high with debris at his two o’clock, fourteen metres away. A forklift truck next to a stack of pallets at his twelve.
Carter dropped to a kneeling firing position half in, half out of the doorway. Using the frame to protect himself from any enemy incoming. He dumped the ammo pouch beside the door frame and worked quickly to load the GM-94. He’d used the grenade launcher a few times before on the ranges at Pontrilas. Foreign weapon familiarisation. An important part of every Regiment man’s tool kit. The ability to pick up almost any weapon and know how to operate it without wasting valuable time.
He prised open the top cover on the mag tube and took out a round from the ammo pouch. Slipped the grenade into the tube situated above the pump-action barrel. Closed the cover again. Flipped up the aiming sights. Pulled back the slider and shunted it forward.
Carter trained the weapon at the corner of the building to his right. In the same breath, three mobsters surged into view.
Two of the guys were running ahead of their mate. A short pot-bellied bloke in a black-and-green tracksuit, and a shaven-headed guy dressed in a pair of acid-wash jeans and a shiny blue shirt. A third Tajik in a grey hoodie lagged a couple of metres behind the 1980s tribute act. All three of them were aiming their AK-47s at the doorway as they scurried forward across the exposed ground.
A moment later, their muzzles flamed.
Bullets zipped through the air, whizzing several inches above Carter. The door frame behind him erupted in a shower of splinters. Other rounds smacked into the wall, spitting out clouds of hot dust. Carter held his nerve. He didn’t panic. The key to winning a firefight. Any idiot can fire a gun from behind cover. But at some point, if you want to kill the other guy, you’re going to have to expose yourself. In that situation, the person who wins is the one who has the balls to stay calm and take a well-aimed shot.
Carter made a millisecond assessment of his opponents. His soldier’s eyes quantum-processing their gaits, their firing stances, their tactical awareness. He could see that these guys were badly trained. They were running straight towards him, pissing bullets, spraying from the hip, not even bothering to aim at Carter. Hoping for a successful outcome in that situation was like a football player taking a penalty kick blindfolded. The odds of Carter getting clipped by these amateurs were a million to one.
Tracksuit and Acid Wash were twelve metres from him now. Hoodie was maybe a metre behind, closing the distance on his friends. Combat FOMO. He was desperate to join in the killing.
A couple of metres behind him, the other two gangsters had come tearing round the corner. One man wore a leather biker jacket; his mate was sporting a black beanie and a shiny puffer coat.
Carter calmly aimed the GM-94 up at an angle. He steadied his breathing. Lined up the launcher sights with the three nearest mobsters barrelling towards him. He wasn’t worried about firing the weapon at such short range. You could pop a thermobaric grenade at a target ten metres away without risk of injury.
In the next second, he squeezed the trigger.
The GM-94 had a hell of a kick on it. Carter felt the recoil shuddering through his body as the round popped out of the barrel. There was a stunning flash as the grenade struck the ground two inches to the side of the skip. An ear-shattering bang ripped through the air. Smoke gushed into the afternoon sky.
The three mobsters were shredded. The destructive power of a thermobaric round in action. You didn’t need to hit the target. Stick it anywhere in the three-metre kill radius, and the pressure wave and the vacuum would take care of the rest.
Three enemies down.
Two to go.
The first bang got the attention of the two gangsters to the rear of the dead guys. Carter glimpsed them in his peripheral vision, breaking across the open ground, running for cover behind the forklift at his twelve o’clock. Their survival instincts had taken over. No one wanted to be on exposed ground when they were on the receiving end of a grenade launcher. Getting behind something solid was suddenly their top priority in life.
Carter fetched another grenade from the pouch and slid it into the tube. More bullets spattered the door frame around him as the two guys behind the forklift popped up from cover and opened fire. Two rounds thudded into the door frame no more than six inches to Carter’s right. He felt the whoosh of hot air as another bullet zipped overhead. The gangsters couldn’t aim for shit. Carter felt like they could have shot at him all day without hitting the target.
He aimed at the forklift.
Lobbed another grenade.
The gangsters made no attempt to relocate. They had four thousand kilograms of metal separating them from the soldier in the doorway. They felt they were safe.
They were wrong.
The round struck the forklift side-on. The two mobsters hunkered down behind it let out demented screams of agony. The guy in the puffer coat staggered away from the kill zone, blood streaming out of his ears and eyes. Mouth hanging open in unspeakable agony.
Carter ditched the grenade launcher and tore his Grach pistol free from his holster as he rushed forward to finish the job. Puffer had sunk to his hands and knees on the ground a couple of metres from the forklift, coughing up a gout of blood. The effect of the pressure wave massacring his vitals. Turning them to relish while leaving the shell of his body intact.
The Tajik grasped Carter’s intentions as the latter closed in on him. He raised a trembling hand in a futile effort to protect his face and made a deep moaning sound in the back of his throat. Begging for mercy, maybe. Carter didn’t know. He wasn’t a linguist.
He double-tapped the mobster at point-blank range. Painting the asphalt a new shade of brain red. Then he hooked round to the side of the forklift. Ready to dispatch the other guy.
Biker Jacket was sprawled on the ground with his head turned inside out. All his facial cavities had exploded. The shock wave had distorted his features. Like a badly drawn approximation of a face. Somehow, he was still drawing breath. An inhuman groan escaped from the torn hole that had once been the guy’s mouth. Carter gave him the good news with two quick rounds to his fucked-up face.
Take that, you prick. And don’t ever mess with the SAS.
He ran across to the skip to engage the other three mobsters before they could recover. He shouldn’t have bothered. All three of them were dead. They had been caught in the grenade’s three-metre kill radius. The shell had decimated their bodies. Blood was leaking out of their eyes, their noses, their mouths, their ears.
No more than a minute had passed since the mobsters had debussed from their G-Wagons. Carter’s ears were ringing. He was dimly aware that the shooting from the front end of the building had ceased. Vann and Ramsey had walloped the three remaining mobsters.
Eight dead. Textbook military defence.
Almost over.
But not quite.
Now I’ve got to finish off the other fuckers.
He reholstered the Grach, stooped down and seized the AK-47 lying next to Tracksuit’s disfigured corpse. Carter thumbed the mag release catch and checked the clip. Making sure he had enough ammo for the two remaining targets inside the unit. Steel-jacketed 7.62 x 39 mm rounds gleamed dully in the magazine.
Two-thirds full. Twenty bullets or so.
Good enough.
He popped the clip back into the mag well. Pushed the fire selector lever in the down position. Semi-auto firing mode.
Then he started for the rear doorway.
Time to sort out Vann and Ramsey.
Carter cautiously approached the stronghold. He moved at a slow walk, wooden buttstock flush against his shoulder, the AK-47’s front and rear sights fixed on the entry point fifteen metres away. Several seconds had passed since he’d last heard gunfire coming from the other side of the stronghold. There was a chance he might be walking into a snap ambush. Ramsey and Vann might be lying in wait for him inside. Behind the truck, perhaps. Weapons trained on the back door. Ready to empty rounds into Carter as soon as he appeared in the entrance.
He would have to neutralise Vann. There was no question about that, not anymore. The guy had passed the point of no return. Any residual sympathy Carter had felt for his old mentor had been blown away as soon as he’d laid eyes on the backpack nukes.
Hundreds of thousands of casualties. Mass destruction.
And the end of the world, possibly. Once the Chinese realised who had been culpable – an inevitability, no matter how careful Ramsey had been – they wouldn’t hesitate to hit back with unimaginable force.
Greed had driven Vann to a very dark place. There was a price to pay for that. We might both be former Para Reg, Carter thought, but I’m not the same as Vann. I’m not the same as him at all.
He was ten metres from the entry point when he heard a distinctive sound.
The whirr of an electric motor.
Somewhere inside the building, an engine puttered into life.
Carter felt an icy pang of dread.
He broke into a run. Caution thrown to the wind. In a few manic beats he dashed through the entrance and looked towards the front end of the stronghold. The shutter roller door had been raised. Daylight was streaming in through the opening, flooding the interior space.
The box truck was screaming down the vehicle ramp.
Racing towards the main road.
Carter levelled his weapon with the back of the vehicle. No time to properly aim. He gave three quick pulls of the trigger, pointing the AK in the general area of the tyres. Disable the truck before it could make its getaway. There was no danger of triggering the nukes, Carter knew. They were enclosed in bulletproof protective containers to keep them safe during transit.
Two of the bullets landed short, thwacking into the asphalt several inches behind the rearmost tyres. The third round ricocheted off the rear sliding door.
The engine growled. The truck rapidly gained speed. There was a jolting shudder as it ran over the dead body of a Tajik gangster before it ploughed on past the two stationary G-Wagons, leaving the mobster’s ragged corpse behind it in a tangle of bloodied limbs.
Carter loosed off a fourth round at the departing vehicle. A desperation shot. The bullet struck the rear licence plate as the truck pulled clear of the stronghold.
After a hundred and fifty metres, the truck abruptly slowed, brake lights flaring in the greying afternoon light. A tongue of bright flame licked out of the passenger’s side window. Rounds sparked against the Yamaha, riddling the fuel tank.
Carter watched his ride go up in smoke as the truck sped off again. A few moments later, it reached the main road and slewed to the right, dropping out of sight.
There was no time to fuck about. Carter instantly knew what he had to do.
There’s a private jet coming in today, Vann had said.
Them nukes are being transported to Taiwan.
The small airfield, he realised. Fifteen kilometres due north of Talbarok. The only airstrip anywhere in the vicinity of the town.
That’s where the bastards were going.
He ditched the AK-47 and raced out through the garage door, chopping his stride as he sprinted madly towards the bodies sprawled on the ground twenty metres in front of the stronghold.
Vann had shot up his Yamaha in the hopes of stalling Carter. But he could still give chase in one of the G-Wagons.
Find the keys. Get on the main road.
If I floor it, I’ve still got a chance to catch Vann and Ramsey before they can ferry the nukes to the airfield.
He dropped down beside the guy who’d been flattened by the truck and started padding down his mutilated corpse. Carter checked his jacket pockets, his trousers. He found nothing. The guy was just a bag of crushed bones and squidgy flesh.
Carter hotfooted it over to the other two gangsters. Thoroughly searched both of them. He found a crocodile-skin wallet, a couple of burner phones, clips of cash, flavoured gum, Russian-branded cigarette packets, cheap lighters.
But no key fob.
Shit.
He ran back through the stronghold. Heart drumming inside his chest. Carter bolted out of the rear doorway and hurried towards the two dead guys at his twelve o’clock. He checked Puffer first. The guy was a million different kinds of fucked up. Blood dribbled out of his nostrils. His ribs had been pulverised, his eyeballs blown out of their sockets. His skin looked like bruised fruit. Within moments Carter’s hands were lacquered in blood. He still found nothing. He turned his attention to Biker Jacket, moving fast as he rooted through his coat and trouser pockets. He located the shattered remnants of a key fob in the Tajik’s inside pocket. Smashed apart by the sheer force of the pressure wave.
No good.
Carter got up again. Ran over to the other three guys lying face-down beside the debris-filled skip.
Whole minutes had passed since the truck had bombed out of the industrial estate. Right now Vann and Ramsey would be racing towards the airfield, putting crucial distance between themselves and Carter. Every extra second increased their advantage.
Carter finally hit paydirt on Tracksuit’s body. He pulled out a sleek-looking key fob from the guy’s blood-soaked joggers. The fob was smeared with blood. Carter wiped it down on the tracksuit sleeve, shot to his feet and flew back through the rear entrance into the stronghold. He halted briefly beside the workbench and picked up the Dragunov sniper rifle. Figured he’d need something with more accuracy and range than an AK-47 or the broken-down M4 rifle in his rucksack.
The Dragunov was chambered for the 7.62 mm Russian, a bigger round than the 5.56 mm used by the M4. Which basically translated to more stopping power. That could prove useful, if he needed to blow the truck tyres, or put some rounds into the side of the private jet.
I’m going up against an ex-Blade and a retired US Delta operator, Carter thought. Both of them armed with assault rifles.
I’m going to need all the help I can get.
He slung the Dragunov tactical carry-strap over his shoulder, muzzle pointing up. Scooped up a couple of mags of spare ammunition for the rifle, ten bullets to a clip. Tucked them into his side pockets, then legged it out of the unit through the busted front door. Carter bustled over to the two G-Wagons parked seventy metres away. He stopped a dozen paces from them and tapped the unlock button on the Benz key fob. The vehicle on the left flashed and clicked.
Get fucking moving, the voice in Carter’s head urged.
He shoved the Dragunov into the back of the G-Wagon, jogged round to the front and dived behind the wheel. The interior was all luxury leather stitching and ambient lighting and polished aluminium. Carter stabbed the start button. The engine rumbled. The dash display lit up. The fuel indicator arrow was near the full mark. Some sort of bass-heavy Russian rap music thumped out of the internal speakers. Carter muted it.
He shifted the stick into Drive and U-turned in the middle of the asphalt patch until the front end of the G-Wagon was facing the main road. Then Carter mashed the pedal, and the twin-turbo V8 engine emitted a deep roar as he motored away from the industrial estate.
He pulled up after 150 metres. Next to the garage and the shot-up Yamaha. Carter hopped out of the wagon and retrieved the rucksack he’d stowed behind the mound of rubble. He pulled out the satphone, threw it aside and tossed the pack into the back seat, next to the Dragunov rifle.
In the distance, the mechanical wail of police sirens pierced the air.
Cops.
The sound of the gunfire and the GM-94 rounds would have travelled for miles, Carter knew.
Another minute, and the police will be all over this place.
Time to get the fuck out of here.
Carter vaulted back into the driving seat. He gunned the G-Wagon and hurtled towards the main road, wrenching the steering wheel hard to the right as he reached the T-junction. The vehicle lurched heavily, two and a half tons of metal fishtailing across the tarmac, tyres squealing, motorbikes swerving to avoid him, taxi horns blaring. Carter wrestled with the wheel, straightened out, put his foot to the pedal again.
The wagon shot forward. Zero to sixty in under five seconds.
Thirty seconds later, Carter was bulleting north out of Talbarok.
Speeding towards the airfield.