Viper Nine Read online

  It would be enough to keep the minus-forty temperatures at bay while allowing the skin to breathe in warmer climes. And all thanks to Anna, who’d used Mo’s hacking and surveillance programme, Zeus, to tap into the supply systems of the US military stationed in Dubai.

  She’d placed an urgent order for equipment and uniforms for a classified training exercise. Not to mention the C-130 transport plane, which had come with a three-member aircrew, briefed not to ask questions.

  Baptiste checked the oxygen gauge on his left wrist and the compass on his right. He tested the air supply from his mask, strapped on his goggles and picked his helmet off his seat.

  The Russian looked around the low-lit cabin at Pope and Rios, suiting up in the same gear.

  ‘Check my pack, mate?’ Pope asked, using the comms to communicate over the drone of the engines.

  Baptiste nodded and gave the chute the once over. ‘Shit, I think you got a bad one.’

  ‘Seriously?’ Pope craned his neck and spun in a circle like a dog chasing its own tail.

  The Russian laughed as the big man twigged and gave him the one-finger salute.

  He gave Baptiste a rueful smile and squeezed him on an injured shoulder. ‘Good to have you back, mate.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Baptiste replied, gritting his teeth through the pain.

  Lim shuffled into view and helped Rios with her checks.

  ‘I don’t know who’s in worse shape,’ Baptiste said, looking at the cuts and bruises on her face.

  ‘At least you’ve had a rest,’ Lim replied, strapping on her helmet.

  ‘You sure you’re up to this?’ Rios asked.

  ‘I’m French,’ Baptiste replied. ‘We’re indestructible.’

  ‘You’re not French,’ Pope said, shaking his head. ‘Bloody galah.’

  Baptiste smiled. If they were about to die, he wasn’t going to miss an opportunity to pull on the Aussie’s strings.

  ‘Three minutes out,’ a male aircrew member interrupted.

  Baptiste gave him the thumbs up and took a seat next to Rios, with Pope on the opposite side of her. Did he sense something between them? A different energy? Pope seemed calmer somehow. Almost mature, an intensity of focus he hadn’t seen in him before.

  Unless the Australian was on a bonus incentive. Baptiste himself was itching to get down there. Sure, there was every chance Driver and Wells were already dead. But psychopaths like Kovac had to be stopped. Perhaps for the first time, Baptiste no longer felt coerced into this life – part of someone else’s machine. He’d chosen to stay on the team, to put his life in the firing line.

  He felt a lightness inside, as if liberated from heavy chains he’d carried for years. It pumped adrenaline into his system and for a moment, he forgot about the pain.

  ‘Depressurising,’ came the update from the female pilot.

  Like the others, Baptiste fixed his oxygen mask in place and breathed in the pure air. His levels were good, his head clear. The rest of the team strapped on their masks and their goggles. Baptiste lowered his over his eyes and stood from his seat.

  The aircrew man appeared with his own mask and goggles. As he operated the cargo bay door, Baptiste hooked his M4 rifle over his shoulders and pulled on the strap. It fixed tight to his chest, the cargo bay door yawning open like the mouth of a whale.

  The sight was beautiful. A bed of fluffy white clouds, a ceiling of stars and a golden glow over the curve of the horizon.

  ‘Thirty-thousand,’ Pope said over the comms. ‘How high is that in miles?’

  ‘Just the six,’ Rios replied, strapping an extra bag to her front.

  ‘We must be crazy,’ Baptiste said, trying to remember the last time he’d made a HALO jump.

  ‘Or plain dumb,’ Rios continued. ‘Why do I get myself into this shit?’

  ‘Because you wouldn’t have it any other way,’ said Lim, gazing at the view.

  With the door open and the red light activated, Baptiste led the team to the edge of the cargo bay.

  ‘On the green light,’ the airman said. ‘I’ll count you in.’

  The Russian felt the nerves kick in. His last HALO jump was over twenty years ago. Yet he was trained to take those nerves and turn them into excitement, a tingling feeling pulsing upwards through his body.

  The airman began the countdown from three. Baptiste calmed his breathing and focused on the clouds below. They were at two, his body light and on its toes. One, the team behind him, ready to surge forward.

  Zero and the light turning green. The command given to jump.

  Baptiste ran forward and threw himself over the edge into an arrowing dive.

  At 120 miles per hour, the rush was intense. Baptiste passed through a mist of clouds and popped out over a pitch-dark sea of desert sand.

  The digital green altimeter built into his goggles spun down from thirty-thousand to twenty in the blink of an eye. Yet time itself dilated, Baptiste having forgotten how long a minute of free fall seemed.

  And how peaceful. He checked over both shoulders and found that in spite of the lack of training, the others had formed a near-perfect stack behind.

  Plunging towards the deck, Baptiste flattened his body. He kept a close eye on the altimeter, dropping fast from five to four-thousand. As they neared three-thousand feet, he gave the order to deploy.

  A glance and he saw Pope, Lim and Rios pulling their chutes. They vanished into the darkness, as if sucked up into the sky.

  Baptiste was quick to open his own, flipping upright and the chute filling with air.

  The high speed of the fall coupled with minimal forward airspeed would avoid any radar Kovac may have installed. The HALO jump also cut the time their parachutes might be visible to observers on the ground.

  Baptiste’s navigation skills were among the best in the team and his head the most experienced. So he’d self-selected to lead the descent, relying on his compass in the absence of daylight and landmarks.

  They drifted in silence, opening high enough for the sound of the chutes not to alert the guards in an otherwise silent desert.

  Dropping within a thousand feet, Baptiste led the insert towards the floodlit compound. His breathing was the soundtrack through the oxygen mask as they drifted to the desert floor.

  He touched down feather-soft three-hundred metres back from the ridge of a towering rock formation. Peeling off their backpacks, jumpsuits and HALO equipment, the team moved in tight formation. They ghosted over the sand in their skin-tight black outfits, blending in with the dark.

  Thanks to the floodlit compound, night-vision wouldn’t be necessary. It made them faster and lighter, hitting the dirt on their bellies and scoping the view over the edge of the rock.

  The compound was a converted jail with vehicles to the left side and supplies to the other.

  On the top of the ridge, to the right, lay a huddle of boulders that would make the perfect spot for Rios. She was quick to peel off and shuffle low with her rifle bag in their direction.

  Like Pope to his left and Lim to his right, Baptiste jumped to his feet and pulled a rope gun from his belt. He shot a bolt in the floor of the rock and stepped out over the ledge.

  They moved in a three-pronged line, a near-vertical sprint in big, bounding steps down the rock. Baptiste kept his steps light, only the lightest of whirs audible as the guide rope held its tension all the way to the ground.

  Baptiste bounded off a large rock and landed in a dry bed of coarse grass among the tree line to the rear of the compound. He detached from his line, leading Lim and Pope through the trees. They spread wide and each took a guard keeping watch on the outside of the perimeter fence.

  The Russian crept out of the trees and slipped a knife from his belt. He slapped a hand over the guard’s mouth, kicked his standing leg and pulled him to the ground out of sight of the lights.

  Baptiste thrust the blade in the bigger man’s neck. He struggled, heavy as a house. But he was soon dead and rolled away into the bushes. Yet not before the Rus
sian agent had snapped the security pass from around his neck.

  As Baptiste re-emerged from the trees, Pope and Lim finished off their opponents and joined him at a gate in the fence. Scanning his stolen pass, he opened the gate. Timed to perfection, snipers on the roof of the jail collapsed cutesy of near-silent rounds from Rios.

  The floodlights were the next to go, shot to a million pieces by the Mexican, positioned up on the ridge. ‘Clear,’ she confirmed over comms as Baptiste raced across the old prison yard towards the main building.

  It was a race against time before the break of dawn, yet one of the snipers appeared on his feet, wounded, but nothing fatal.

  He fired in the air and swung a searchlight across the yard before being cut down at the second attempt by Rios.

  A headshot saw him topple off the roof and land in Baptiste’s path. The Russian sidestepped the swinging beam of the searchlight and headed for the rear compound door.

  Yet the element of surprise had been lost. Armed security pouring out of the rear door under the glare of a security light.

  Baptiste came to a dead stop, dropped to a knee and fired. Hushed M4 rounds from his rifle put two down before they could shoot, with another pair falling victim to Lim.

  The man at the rear swerved around the falling bodies behind the blast of a 9mm automatic.

  It was short-lived, Pope ghosting out of the darkness with his rifle to his eye. He fired point-blank to the man’s skull, snuffing out the second line of resistance.

  Baptiste was wise enough to know that more would follow. He wedged a boot between frame and door as it swung shut. They moved inside, Baptiste leading the team through dark, claustrophobic corridors.

  Anxious voices echoed off the walls, followed close behind by boots and torchlight. With little need for stealth, Baptiste flicked on the high-powered beam attached to the base of his rifle barrel. He raised the M4 sighting and prepared to engage.

  Chapter 45

  One of the worst things about being confined to a prison cell was losing all sense of time. Were the minutes moving fast, or dragging slow?

  For Wells, stripped of his watch and all forms of communication, every second seemed to crawl by as he contemplated Driver’s fate. He suspected the worst, and expected to be hauled out next.

  But next never came. He lost all track of time in the darkness of the cell, no sun to use as a measurement for the hour. Only the narrowest glimpse of the stars through a high, barred window.

  He paced from wall to wall, wishing he’d made peace with Driver earlier. Why didn’t he just tell her that he’d seen the tattoo? Plus, if he’d stuck to his part of the mission, maybe she’d have ingratiated herself to Kovac. Maybe she’d still be alive.

  It begged the question why Kovac had waited. And why Wells himself was being kept in a cell at all. Did they want him to rot? Or did they have something worse in store?

  Keeping him as a hostage didn’t make sense. The Americans had more power than the British. And one of their own – especially a white woman – would carry more sway with the politicians and voters if they broadcasted a ransom demand on YouTube.

  That left the prospect of torture. Wouldn’t be the first time, and Wells was trained to endure it. Yet it still filled him with a sense of dread, every nerve and sinew tensing at the thought.

  Wells took a running jump and caught hold of the bars on the window, eight feet off the floor. He dug the toes of his boots into the wall and held his weight in place as he stared through the window, out at the rear of the compound. The rock face dominated all, yet the sky looked a shade lighter. And did he see movement in the distance? Shapes, shadows, drifting to the desert floor? No, he was seeing things.

  His concentration was broken by the turn of a lock. This time it was his door. The captured operative dropped to the floor and turned as a rush of guards came through the door. There were four in total, surrounding him with their rifles. The lights turned on, Wells covering his eyes.

  The guards grabbed him by his arms and pulled them behind his back. Wrist ties gripped tight to his skin and they dragged him out of the cell. Wells fought all the way, but there were too many of them. He took a rifle butt in the small of his back. Another to the base of his neck as they forced him through dark corridors as far as the atrium. Far more than needed to subdue him.

  Kovac was waiting, a space cleared on the floor.

  ‘What have you done with her?’ Wells demanded of him.

  ‘It’s too late for your girlfriend,’ said Kovac, as Wells was knocked to his knees.

  He looked around and found himself in front of a wall draped in a giant flag – the same design as Driver’s tattoo. Funny, he hadn’t noticed it before.

  It must be a special occasion, Wells thought, as he looked ahead of him to a video camera on a tripod.

  Kovac strolled to a nearby desk and popped the locks on a weathered brown leather case.

  ‘I don’t know about you,’ he said with his back to Wells. ‘But I’m sick of all this modern technology.’ The Serb removed a large machete from the case and held it in the palms of his hands. ‘Sometimes the old ways are the best, don’t you agree?’ Kovac turned with the weapon, as if expecting an answer.

  Wells stayed quiet, coming to terms with a bloody end. He hoped Kovac was good with the blade. And not so evil that he would deny him a single, clean strike.

  The Serb tapped the thick, flat end of the blade. ‘It’s been a while since I used one of these. The last time was my stepfather.’ Kovac gazed at the machete, as if lost in memory. ‘This time we won’t lose.’

  ‘You’ve already lost,’ Wells said. ‘Your plan failed, remember?’

  ‘It hasn’t failed,’ Kovac snapped, before calming his temper. ‘We’re just going to have to adjust our approach.’

  ‘Approach to what?’ Wells asked.

  ‘To driving out the infestation,’ Kovac replied, levelling Wells with a stare. ‘Starting with you.’

  ‘Chopping my head off isn’t going to change anything,’ Wells countered.

  Kovac laughed. ‘No, but it will make one hell of a news story.’

  ‘Um, there might be a problem with that,’ a young woman said, appearing at Kovac’s side. She appeared tired under the artificial hanging lights of the atrium, her eyes lined red.

  ‘What now, Jana?’ Kovac sighed.

  ‘We’ve lost control of our media outlets,’ she replied. ‘We can no longer hijack transmissions. They’ve kicked us out of our own network.’

  Kovac turned to her, brandishing the machete.

  ‘I’ve never encountered this before,’ Jana pleaded.

  ‘Never encountered, huh?’ the Serbian muttered, simmering with fury. He gripped the heavy blade as if ready to slice the girl in two. ‘We’ve still got a Facebook page, haven’t we?’

  ‘Of course,’ Jana replied, backing away. ‘I’ll set it up.’

  Kovac returned his attention to Wells. ‘Honestly,’ he sighed, picking a Viper Nine snake mask off a nearby table and slipping it over his head.

  The Serb positioned himself in front of Wells as Graf appeared behind the camera. The German opened the viewfinder and adjusted the angle on the tripod.

  The red light on the camera came on. This was it.

  Wells looked around him as Kovac spoke into the camera in Russian. The same predictable shtick about ridding the world of its ills. Yet the British agent wasn’t paying full attention. He was weighing the possibility of an exit plan.

  He was willing to bet he could kill at least two of the surrounding armed guards before they gunned him down. Perhaps he could take Kovac with him before he had chance to swing that machete. But with his wrists tied, at rifle point, with a blade hovering unseen over his head? Come on.

  Wells had to face it. Escape was impossible. The best he could do was keep his shit together in front of the watching world. Don’t give the scumbag the satisfaction, he thought, facing the camera and breathing deep into the diaphragm to calm his skittering
nerves. If he submitted now and let Kovac have a clean strike, at least he wouldn’t feel it.

  Wells made his peace as Kovac finished his speech. But what was that? A distant rattle.

  Gunfire?

  * * *

  Rios decided to perform one last sweep of the compound exterior before joining the others. By the sound of the comms, they were still alive and engaged in a firefight. Yet she wanted to be sure there were no surprises before she played catch-up.

  Not to the rear of the jail or the perimeter, no. But as she panned far-left, Rios caught sight of approaching headlights in the murk of an emerging dawn.

  She zoomed in on the lights and saw two open-topped military trucks with a twelve-strong crew on the back of each.

  They rode ahead of a turret-mounted Humvee, kicking up a trail of dust as they charged towards the compound.

  The approaching convoy looked a hell of a lot like a rapid response unit – probably stationed nearby.

  Shit, this Kovac motherfucker thought of everything.

  The Mexican considered her options. Rios could take a few guys out – maybe. But there’s no way she could stop them all. Which meant the others needed all the help they could get.

  ‘Bad news,’ Rios announced over the comms. ‘Looks like someone called the cavalry. Two-dozen bogeys and a big-ass gun.’

  ‘I knew it was too easy,’ Pope replied over a tat-tat of gunfire.

  ‘I’m coming down,’ Rios said, ditching her sniper rifle between boulders and drawing her rope gun from her belt. She fired into the ground and stepped off the ridge with no time to test the line.

  Rios bounded down the rock face, catching a second of airtime between each stride. Unhooking from the rope as the rock face levelled off, she jumped into the long grass and dodged through a thicket of trees.

  The ex-Federali leapt over the body of a dead guard and sprinted through the perimeter gate left open by the team. She followed the trail of bodies in through a rear door and along a series of dark corridors.