Brant smiled. “I like your thinking. We need to find local hel-pads.”
“And flat spaces that could be plausibly used.”
The next few minutes consisted of much muttering and making notes on a pad. When we finished our virtual tour of the city, we had a long list. “Shit,” I muttered. “We can’t cover this.”
“No, we can’t. We have to narrow down the choices,” Brant said.
“Okay, assuming we are right, and they’ll be taking her out of the airport, we have limited access roads to cover.”
“But if we sanction an operation anywhere nearby the Russians will not be reasonable.”
“Why?” I asked. “What have you done to piss them off so much?”
Brant shrugged. “Luke and Sam blew up and killed some high-level Russian mafia and it’s caused a bit of a political shit storm.”
I chuckled. “I liked Luke, he’s a good man. I’m glad he’s happy.”
“There will be wedding bells soon, I have no doubt,” Brant said. “It’s been a long road for them, but they finally have their collective shit together. Talking of which…” She studied me for a long time making me fidget.
I scowled, unused to talking about feelings and relationships, especially with my commanding officer, but Brant ran a tight crew and at least some of her job was pastoral care. The words struggled to come together to describe what I had with the man I loved, but I found them – kind of.
“Jacob and I are… We’re doing okay. There are some issues, we’ve both made mistakes thanks to Clark but it’s nothing we can’t iron out.”
“And your future together?”
I shrugged. “Don’t know. I don’t want to return to the Regiment, even if they would accept me again. I don’t think Jacob needs it either. So we’re currently debating the rights and wrongs of running a tearoom in Devon.”
Brant laughed. “Yeah, I can see that working for all of 5 minutes. What if I offered you both a job with Unit 12?”
“Considering Jacob’s PTSD, I’m not sure that’s a good idea, ma’am.”
“It is if he promises to attend regular therapy sessions to work through the problems. Let’s face it, Mac, he’s going to need them regardless of where he works. There are many benefits to working for me. More autonomy, less oversight. More toys to play with and some challenging work environments.”
“Like blowing shit up in Russia you mean? That kind of challenging?” I couldn’t help but find this amusing, she sounded like a recruitment demon for the devil.
“Just like that, Sergeant. More pay. Better health care. Better pension.”
“If we live long enough to retire.”
“Fair point. Well, you have my sales pitch such as it is, so have a think about it.”
“I will, ma’am and thank you. It means more than you can know that you trust me with this offer.”
I meant it as well. To be offered a chance to return to the action? The thought drew me like a moth to the moon. I couldn’t help it, despite my words to Jacob, I still craved the fight. The challenges and demands, the chance to use all the training I’d been given over the years for someone like Brant and Unit 12, it spelt nothing short of temptation.
“Back to our task, Sergeant before the others arrive.”
We bent our heads over the laptop and studied the access roads, the possible deviations and timings. By the time we’d finished we had a plan and the others had returned. Jacob looked very pleased with himself.
“What have you done?” I asked.
“Got new toys,” he announced. “I like this Aria, she knows her guns.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “I’m so pleased for you.”
“Wish we had time to practice with them though. Do we have a plan?” he asked, handing me a burger and bag of chips.
“We do,” I said, around a mouthful of food.
Brant, eating with a little more delicacy than I managed, explained the plan in detail. “There are a limited number of access roads to the international airport on the outskirts of the city.” She indicated the map. “They could take several out of the airport providing privacy but only one brings them towards the city and we are surmising they will want to move Ms Begum as swiftly and quietly as possible.”
Jacob pointed to the main motorway access to the airport. “So they’ll be using the Doroga V Aeroport road?” His Russian was worse than mine.
“Yes. I believe so.”
I said, “We don’t want to engage the enemy too close to the airport, it’ll make life complicated with the authorities but there’s a great location here for a staged assault.” I pointed to a small road and an industrial area right before the motorway broke off into two major arteries, neither of which we could control with ease.
“We’ll be on the wrong side of the motorway,” Jacob pointed out.
“Yes, that’s a bit of a problem unless you have a small amount of C4 tucked away,” I admitted.
“Just as well I’m a good boy scout then,” he said with a wiggle of his eyebrows.
“We blow the charge, drive through the barrier, take out the vehicle, remove Ms Begum and be on our way,” Brant said. “We return to the city because that’s the easiest way to lose the Koreans and any Russian interference. When things quieten down a little we slip out of the city and head to Japan, a simple diversion that should keep them guessing.”
“There aren’t too many variables,” Lydia said. “It’s just making certain we have the correct vehicle targeted.”
“That will be your job, Sergeant. I need you to get into the airport’s CCTV while we’re on the road. It’s going to take at least 45 minutes to reach the target location.”
We stuffed the rest of the food down our necks and drank the soda. The change in everyone’s demeanour became pronounced. We were no longer travelling; we were about to engage the enemy and it showed in the quiet but certain movements as we set about our tasks. Jacob took me downstairs and opened the boot of the white Hyundai Santa Fe he’d liberated.
“It’s all Russian,” he said. “But it’s good.”
Many of these weapons I’d only read about and never used. The heavy, but awesome looking, Stechkin OTs-38 silent revolver might only carry five rounds, but it really did do the job it was designed for, shooting people with minimal noise. We also had the mythical, NRS-2 which was a knife that contained a single round in the handle and was also noiseless according to the specs. He’d lifted a Vityaz-SN submachine gun and the most exciting toy – a Saiga-12 automatic shotgun. My mouth watered and my fingers itched to be able to play. Childish glee made me want to clap my hands. There were a couple of bolt-action sniper rifles for long range work as well.
“I like this Aria woman,” I said.
“So does Lydia apparently.” Jacob closed the boot. “We’ve a small amount of C4 and detonators as well. You happy with the plan?”
“Shouldn’t I be?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Collateral damage, Mac. A lot of civilians use that road.”
He glanced at me but couldn’t hold my gaze for very long and we both remembered the sensation of blood, brain matter and skull against our skin in Delta’s room at the club. I gripped his shoulder and forced him to make eye contact. “What we do now we do for the greater good and we will use the minimum amount of force necessary. A few crashed vehicles I can live with. If Lydia can tap into their road cameras, we might even have real time int that can help up minimise the potential for civilian casualties.”
He nodded.
I wanted to tell him about Brant’s job offer but I needed time to think about the possibilities before I decided what I wanted to do about it. I also needed to consider the impact on Jacob. His mental health had to be a priority. One of the things I’d learned though, since leaving the army, was a simple one – you might leave the army, but it never left you. I still woke with the larks most days, tabbed miles to keep fit, and maintained a high level of awareness looking for potential threats. I couldn’t stop being a
n operator just because I had no government pointing me at a target and I couldn’t be a merc.
I closed the boot of the suburban four-wheel drive and leaned against the back. “We need to keep the chaos to a minimum. The less chaos, the less chance for casualties and less sleep we’ll lose in the future.”
Jacob put his boot on the bumper near my thigh, his amber eyes were bright but calm. “I like to think I’m not trigger-happy, Mac, but when I’m focused on a target it’s becoming harder to see the good guys and make the right call. I just don’t seem to know who to trust anymore.”
“Seeing women murdering those young men is going to skew your world view, alter your perspective. If you find yourself reliving that moment in your dreams, both awake and asleep you’re going to have problems distinguishing right from wrong, good from bad. Then you begin justifying the decisions you’ve made, especially the bad ones, because you have to be the white knight, the good guy. These things place too much weight on your shoulders when they are already under too much pressure.” I watched my words sink into him.
He nodded but said, “We should go.”
Letting him drop the introspection worried me but I had to maintain the mission’s objective, saving Dilras Begum. Saving Jacob would be a more long-term project. When we returned to the operations post upstairs Brant and Lydia were both in dark clothing holding day-sacks. I grabbed my black coat and we left the OP.
I drove through the city, while Jacob prepared the small amounts of C4 we’d need to blow the hole in the barrier. From the satellite imagery we knew that it was a simple double thickness crash barrier, used the world over, separating the lanes of traffic. By the time we reached the site the sun would be setting, local time 20:13 and it would help afford us some cover. Jacob also found two high-vis vests in the car, so we could mask our movements as highway staff, though it would be risky without hard hats.
We now had 142 minutes to reach our destination and prepare for the tactical assault on a moving vehicle. It should take 42 minutes to reach our target location providing we didn’t hit traffic on the A-370 or they didn’t close the bridge because of high winds. That would leave us with 1 hour and 20 minutes to set the charges, monitor traffic and check our location thoroughly. In theory we had plenty of time.
While I drove, I ran through the SOP, standard operating procedure, for stopping a moving vehicle in traffic or pursuing a hostile vehicle in traffic. I’d done the relevant courses back in the day, but hadn’t used those skills in years, unless you counted dodging the traffic in Kinshasa practice.
“Which of us is the most qualified for tactical driving?” I asked the others in the car.
“It’s been too long since I did the courses,” Brant admitted.
“I’ve never done close protection training so haven’t done the defensive driving courses,” Lydia said.
I glanced at Jacob. “I can’t be trusted to make the right decisions, Mac.” A difficult admission in front of his senior officer. Brant chose to remain silent.
“Me then,” I said. “Fair enough, though I’m rusty.” I continued to run through scenarios, seeing them as clearly as possible in my head to help me prepare a sequence of decisions in advance of contact. Of course, plans always went to shit once you’d made contact with the target but having a plan never hurt. It certainly helped the nerves that built up during the preceding hours to a possible live fire event.
21
We made good time and when I pulled into the small industrial car park there were no other vehicles in sight other than the ones needed for work. I parked behind a large hedge of trees, on a secondary road, hiding us from the dual carriageway. Jacob and I did a sweep of the area, looking for potential problems but with it being a Saturday evening the site was empty. With rain on the way, light was low and this far from the south of the city there were enough trees and plants to make the place look more like England than I’d been privy to for the last 3 years. It made me homesick for the first time in all those years and I wondered if I’d be able to go back now Clark was dead. Could Brant really clear my name and keep Clark’s bosses from depriving me of life outside prison or worse?
“Time to set the charges,” Jacob said, cutting off my thoughts.
“High-vis jackets?” I asked.
Jacob looked at the road, checked the height of the sun, and shook his head. “No, we do it dark and hope none of the local police drive past.”
We divvied up the charges and crossed the carriageway. I took right, Jacob took left and we placed the charges close to the ground to blow the uprights holding the bars in place. They should just topple over because we also placed a little either end of the section we needed to remove. With the detonators in place we scooted back to the verge and returned to the car.
I could hear Lydia cursing through the open window. “Problem?”
Her dark eyes shot to mine and I took a step back, hoping she didn’t reach for the pistol she’d taken from the back of the car. “Fucking Windows update,” she growled.
I laughed, which apparently didn’t help and backed off until the swearing stopped. “Why have you got Windows on there?”
“Because I didn’t uninstall it and the fucking system is still one of the most dependable out there. Right,” she said, returning to professional soldier mode, “I’m into the airport’s CCTV and I have their comms. Jesus, their jargon is worse than ours.” She pressed a finger against her ear piece as if it would help her concentrate.
Jacob and I paced, trying not to explode with the building tension. Until he stopped and looked at me. “I just realised something.”
“What’s that?” I asked distracted by watching a bird of prey making the most of the twilight over the hedgerow.
“If we die doing this, or one of us does, we die not having had full sex. I think we need to do something about that.”
I looked at him now, the bird forgotten. “Are you planning on fucking here and now? I think the women might object.”
Jacob grinned. “Pretty sure Lydia would give us scores out of ten.”
“Yeah, don’t think the colonel would approve though.”
He walked up to me, that vivid energy and coiled violence turned to a predator bent on his prey. The gathering darkness and our distance from the vehicle hid our movements from the others. He pressed against me, looking up a little because of our height difference and I gazed into the hungry amber eyes.
“Love you,” he murmured against my lips.
I took hold of the webbing vest covering his black shirt and pulled him even closer. Our lips met and the kiss weakened my knees. His hands crept to my backside and those devious fingers dug into the meat of the muscle.
When I let him up for air, he swayed back a little, dazed, eyes wide. “Damn you’re hot.”
I couldn’t help the satisfied grin and smug contentment. “We aren’t going to die and when this is over you are going to help me learn exactly what ‘full sex’ means between us.”
Jacob pressed his right hand against the bulge in his pants. “Yeah, that sounds like a plan. You, me, bottle of lube and lots of time.” He huffed out a short sharp breath. “Fuck, just the thought of that perfect cock inside me is enough to make me –”
“Gentlemen, front and centre,” Brant called from the car.
Jacob groaned and I chuckled enjoying the pride swelling my chest. I made a younger man weak for me – that’s an ego stroke. We reached the car and Lydia climbed out with the laptop in her hand.
She set it up on the bonnet. “The Leer jet has landed, and they’ve come out of the airport on diplomatic plates, South Korean ones the cheeky bastards. They’re in two large black Mercedes with tinted windows.” She suddenly looked up at us all. “The people of North Korea are starving because of a harvest failure – again – and these pricks are running around the world in Leer jets, with helicopters and luxury vehicles. I fucking hate this world sometimes. Sorry. I just…” she finished her mini rant off with a huff.
&nb
sp; “We all feel the same, Sergeant,” Brant told her. “It never gets any easier.”
Lydia rubbed her face. “Yeah, I know.”
“How long before they reach us? Do we know which vehicle Ms Begum is in?” I asked.
“Rear vehicle,” Lydia said. “Several metal containers were loaded into the first one, I’m guessing Room 39 are moving something back to their paymasters but I don’t know what because they didn’t register a cargo manifest.”
“So we take the rear vehicle and prepare for the first one to return to back up their comrades,” Jacob said.
“Seems sensible,” I said. “I don’t want to take on both vehicles if we don’t have to, they’re going to be heavily armed. We’ll risk too many civilians if we go in heavy-handed and take on both.”
“From what I can see there are six men and one woman, three in each car,” Lydia said. “They might change that formation or pick up more people between the airport and here, I can’t find any more traffic cameras to hijack until the one that’s 50 metres east of our current location. My guess is they’ll stick to the speed limit. Everything I’ve watched them do has been within the law. They are not going to draw attention to themselves.”
“ETA?” Brant asked.
Lydia checked her watch. “Eighteen minutes.”
“Take your places, gentlemen. We’ll be offering covering fire from either side of the junction.”
Jacob and I nodded to each other. With the cloud cover it was almost full dark now, so we’d be hard to spot. We took the assault rifles and shotguns with us, checked the traffic and hoofed it over the road. Brant and Lydia would blow the charges and we’d rise out of the ditch, thankfully dry, to take the occupants of the car.
Jacob and I hunkered down. “I hate waiting,” he muttered.
“You’ve never had any patience,” I said, flattening a thistle too close to my head with my forearm.
Ultimate Sanction Page 17
