Slingshot

by Matthew Dunn

  “Did I pass?”

  Will smiled, felt utter compassion for his comrade-in-arms. “I know your bones still have what it takes. But there’s no going back. We’ll be walking into an armed fortress.”

  Alfie asked, “You bringing other men?”

  Will shook his head. “If I tell Alistair and Patrick what I know, they’ll instruct me to bring the bastard in for a trial, though privately both section heads would prefer me to put a bullet in his head. But this has escalated; the premiers of America, the U.K., and Russia want this dealt with through a judicial process. A show trial. Alistair and Patrick will lose their jobs if I tell them I’m on a kill job. I can’t put them in that position.”

  “You must have men you trust who’ll keep their mouths shut.”

  Will thought about Roger, Laith, Mark, and Adam. “Yes, but they were badly injured by Kronos. Worse than me. They’re still recuperating. There’s no one else, apart from you, Joanna, and Robert, but I can’t involve those two because . . .”

  “Yeah. They definitely ain’t got the bones for it.” Alfie’s voice strengthened. “This chap, Kronos—you going to try to take him on too?”

  “No. I doubt I’d win. Plus, he’s the one who’s helping us.”

  Alfie glanced at Betty’s grave and the grave next to it. “Then we keep this . . . private. In any case, don’t need help from other blokes. Never have.” He smiled. “Sorry, ladies, and please excuse my language: we’re about to fuck up again.”

  Will looked at the grave next to Betty’s.

  His mother’s grave.

  What would she think if she could see him now? Would she be angry, sad, proud, all of those things? He didn’t know. She’d died at a time when he was still a carefree boy who’d never given her any cause to worry about him—he’d excelled at school, had been a committed member of its orchestra, was in those days always smiling, was sometimes awkward in adult company but no more than most teenagers, liked to cook for her, and was never spiteful to his sister. His mother hadn’t been given the chance to know how she’d fare with a more troublesome Will Cochrane.

  “In forty-eight hours we need to be in Germany. I’ll get the weapons. At midday, we need to make the assault. After that,” Will said, nodding, “maybe Mum and Betty will cook us that nice meal.”

  Sixty-Three

  Two days later, Kronos clambered up the ever-steepening mountainside. Deep snow covered the Bavarian mountain and the rest of the Alps; the sky was clear and blue, making the surroundings visually stunning. But the German assassin had no care for the mountain range’s beauty; instead he was totally focused on reaching the place where he could observe from a distance Kurt Schreiber’s mountaintop residence.

  Strapped to his back was a case containing a Barrett M82 .50-caliber antimateriel sniper rifle. As a highly proficient mountaineer, Kronos could have taken a shorter route by ascending one of the range’s more severe mountain faces, but he couldn’t take the risk of making such an ascent and potentially damaging the weapon in the process. He’d therefore selected a path that for the most part enabled him to walk rather than climb. But that meant his journey was much longer. So far he’d covered twelve miles on foot. He had another mile to go.

  He thought about his regular walks up one of the Black Forest’s mountains with his twin sons. They loved their outings with their father, though they frequently complained of fatigue as they neared the summit. Now that the DLB had been used, he’d choose another mountain in the forest for them to climb each week. Maybe a higher one. His boys were ready for a new challenge, and though he would never push them too hard, he would continue to ensure that they received regular, healthy exercise—even if they whined about it. He wondered what they’d be saying to him if they were by his side right now. Smiling, he pictured having to carry them in his arms until they could find a nice spot to have one of their mother’s delicious picnics.

  His smile faded.

  Forget what they would say to him.

  What would they think if they could see him now, moving purposefully toward a place where he intended to kill many men?

  To them, he was a strict but loving and fun father who did nothing more exciting than teaching history at their local school. And that was all they wanted from him. His mundane life made them feel secure and loved, and his dinnertime stories were more than enough adventure for their little minds. They wouldn’t want him to be going out and actually enacting dangerous situations similar to those presented in his tales.

  They’d be horrified if they could see him now, and rightly so.

  That thought made him feel terribly guilty.

  For the sake of his family, he made a pledge that today would be his last adventure.

  Will drove the car off the deserted track and into a forest clearing, stopped the vehicle at the base of one of the Bavarian Alps, and looked at Alfie. “This is as far as we can drive before we’re spotted on the mountain road.”

  Alfie withdrew a map from the glove compartment, opened it, and studied it for the fifth time that day. “Five miles up the single-track road, route snakes like crazy so we’re gonna get a bit of cover, but elevation moves from zero to two thousand yards, so there’s gonna be a lot of times we’re exposed.”

  Will pulled out a single sheet from his jacket and handed it to Alfie. “Hardly tells us anything, but for what it’s worth, that’s an aerial shot of the place.”

  Alfie unfolded the paper and stared at the photo of Schreiber’s residence. “Big property, only one road in and out, fuck-off big drop on three sides of the property, so Schreiber’s got nowhere to run. You get this from NSA or GCHQ?”

  Will shook his head. “Google Earth.”

  “What the bleedin’ ’ell is that?”

  “Never mind.” He exited the vehicle, strode to the trunk, and opened it. Alfie joined him. Both men were dressed in white ski jackets, trousers, and hiking boots—clothes that would give them some degree of concealment as well as protection from the subzero temperature. He unzipped a bag and withdrew two Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine guns, two USP .45 Tactical pistols and thigh holsters, and body harnesses containing spare magazines.

  “Flash bangs?”

  Will shook his head. “I couldn’t get any stun grenades at such short notice.”

  “Shit! We ain’t gonna get anywhere near Schreiber without ’em.”

  Will looked away toward the mountains. “Kronos knows that his best use to us is as a long-range sniper. He’ll be out there somewhere. With him, we stand a chance of getting close.”

  “Maybe, but you’re forgetting one thing, son.”

  “What?”

  Alfie pointed at the aerial shot of Schreiber’s residence. “To get through the walls and still stand a chance of taking off a target’s head, he’ll be using high-velocity rounds—I reckon fifty caliber. We’ll be on our arses if one of those things even scratches us.”

  “Kronos is an expert shot. He won’t miss his targets and accidentally hit us.”

  Alfie strapped the holster to his thigh, inserted the pistol, donned the magazine harness over his jacket, and gripped his submachine gun. “When we’re in the building, and it all goes to rat shit, there’s every chance he’ll mistake us for two of Schreiber’s men. It’s the fact that he’s an expert shot that worries me.”

  Kronos walked fast over the plateau at the mountain summit, ducked low as he neared the top of the valley, unstrapped his rifle case, went prone, and crawled forward over the snow. He rolled onto one side, opened the case, and assembled the working parts of the devastatingly powerful rifle. Extending the barrel’s bipod, he positioned the weapon so that it was facing the valley, stuck five spare ten-round magazines in the snow next to the gun, rolled back onto his stomach, gripped the rifle, and looked though its X26-XLR long-range thermal scope. Eighteen hundred yards away from him, on the other side of the two-thousand-yard-deep valley, was Schreiber’s residence. Built at the beginning of the eighteenth century, the Romanesque-style house h
ad two towers positioned over a white asymmetrical building containing gables, numerous windows, a slate roof, and mock archery slots. The place resembled a small castle, though it had only ever been a private residence for wealthy businessmen, politicians, and artists.

  Now, it was home to an evil man.

  On the north, south, and west sides of the residence were sheer limestone drops that extended to the base of the undulating forested valley and its glistening lake. To the east, a single-track road snaked down a gradually descending ridge. That was the only way to reach Schreiber’s place by vehicle. But Cochrane would be crazy to approach the residence from that direction. Too exposed. Instead, he’d be making a commando assault by scaling one of the two-thousand-yard-high vertical rock faces. Kronos wondered how many men would be accompanying him. At least ten, he decided. Probably more.

  Will slammed the vehicle’s trunk shut, glanced at his watch, checked that his harness and leg holster were firmly in place, and held his submachine gun in one hand. “It’s time.”

  Alfie took a last drag on his cigarette, flicked it away, took a step toward the mountain path, then stopped. “Thank you.”

  “What for?”

  “For bringing me along.”

  Will smiled. “I needed all the help I could get.”

  “Maybe. But another thing struck me about that Google Earth thingy. If you were on yer own, or with blokes half my age, you’d be scaling the mountain to get to the bastard rather than”—he pointed at the five-mile road leading to Schreiber’s mountain residence—“making this suicide run.”

  “Alfie, I . . .”

  “It’s alright, sunshine.” Alfie grinned, his eyes moist. “You don’t need to say anything.” He thrust out his hand.

  Will gripped it firmly.

  They nodded at each other.

  Both knowing that there truly was nothing more to be said.

  They put the butts of their guns into their shoulders.

  And moved up the mountain road.

  Kronos kept scouring the rock inclines for signs of men in white arctic-warfare clothing, using ropes and other equipment to scale the mountain. But he saw nothing. He wondered if Cochrane had ignored his instruction not to use the north face. Perhaps the MI6 officer wanted to assault the castle without being seen by Kronos, for fear that Kronos had other motives for luring him here and would easily pick off him and his men. But that didn’t make any sense.

  He returned his attention to Schreiber’s residence. Since 1995, he’d monitored the movement of all of the men present at the Berlin meeting. Schreiber was the canniest of them all: constantly changing locations within Europe, buying new properties to live in, sometimes purchasing properties with no intention of staying there. None of his bases were listed under his own name; instead they’d been bought using one of his numerous aliases or one of his cover companies. But the manifold layers of subterfuge hadn’t prevented Kronos from establishing Schreiber’s various locations. Some of those places were still under observation by SVR operatives who worked for Mikhail Salkov. But they didn’t know about this place. No one did, apart from him and Will Cochrane.

  He checked his watch. 1210 hours. Was Cochrane late? Not coming at all?

  He checked his cell phone. It was the number he’d given Cochrane. No missed calls or messages.

  He squinted through the thermal scope and moved the gun inch by inch to the right.

  He froze.

  Two men.

  Halfway up the mountain road.

  On foot.

  Carrying guns.

  The big man was Cochrane.

  The other man was . . .

  Twice his age.

  Urgently he moved his scope right and left, searching for other men.

  Nothing.

  Between gritted teeth, the German assassin muttered, “You mad, mad men.”

  Anger flashed across Kurt Schreiber’s face as one of his guards burst into his vast living room. “You’re supposed to knock!”

  The man shook his head, was breathless, looked agitated. “Mr. Schreiber. Two men, halfway up the mountain path, both carrying guns.”

  “Game hunters with rifles?”

  “No. Men dressed in white, carrying submachine guns. One of them is Alfie Mayne.”

  Schreiber chuckled. “And the other is a big man in his thirties.”

  “Correct, sir.”

  “Will Cochrane and Mayne are coming here to have a chat with me about what I did to Betty.” He smiled, removed his rimless glasses, and polished them with a silk handkerchief. “How many men do we have?”

  “Now that the others have returned from the U.K., twenty-six.”

  He placed his glasses back on, and his smile vanished as he stared at his employee. “I would have thought that was more than enough to deal with this trivial matter. Kill Cochrane and Mayne; bring their bodies to me.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The man was about to dash out of the room, but stopped when Schreiber jabbed a finger against the coffee table. “And if you ever come in here again without knocking, I’ll ensure that your dead body is laid alongside those of the men you’re about to kill.”

  After the guard left, Schreiber lifted two files. One of them contained the profiles of the men who’d been present at the Berlin meeting in 1995. Now that Dugan, Scott, and Ballinger had been sentenced and executed, Nikolai Dmitriev and Kurt Schreiber were the only surviving attendees of that meeting. One day that would change—he’d issue orders for Dmitriev to be located and killed. But for now, Dmitriev remained in protective custody, and in any case Schreiber needed to lay low. He didn’t mind. Dugan had paid him fifty million dollars to oversee the activation of Kronos. And that meant he could stay off the radar for a long time.

  He tossed the file into the fire and turned his attention to the second file. A file that was empty, and had only the letter K on its front. Kronos’s failure to kill Dmitriev had utterly shocked Schreiber. If only he’d known the assassin had lost his touch, he’d have used one of the others for the job. But between Kronos’s failure and Dmitriev’s testimony, there was no time to do so. He sighed, thought about the fifty million, then smiled and threw the file into the fire. “Once, you were our finest. It appears that’s no longer the case. Good luck living with that realization.”

  Will moved slowly up the narrow mountain road, Alfie right behind him. Both men held their machine guns high, ready to fire. All along the right of the twisting road was a thirty-yard-high vertical rock escarpment; to their left was the drop to the tranquil valley. They’d been walking for four miles. One mile ahead and high above them was their destination, appearing and disappearing with every bend in the road.

  The icy air caused their breath to steam; their bodies were tense. They knew that at any moment they could be struck by a hail of gunfire.

  Will glanced to his left. On the far side of the valley were more mountains. The closest was approximately eighteen hundred yards away. He wondered if that was where Kronos was waiting. It would give him perfect sight of Schreiber’s residence, of the long road leading to it, and of Will and Alfie. What would the professional assassin be thinking as he looked at the two men cautiously making their way up the track? No doubt, he’d believe they were idiots. Or had a death wish.

  Right now Will didn’t care about death. Or life. All that mattered to him was getting Alfie in front of Schreiber. Sarah was right. It was his fault that Betty had died. He had to make amends for that, regardless of the consequences.

  Alfie was breathing fast, but at no point had he slowed or complained. Instead, the ex-SAS soldier had kept silent, expertly covering the angles with his gun, working with Will so that both men could open fire with maximum impact when assaulted. Sheer determination and a desire to get his hands on Schreiber’s throat were enough to keep the retiree moving along the steep road.

  Will gestured for them to stop, and crouched down. “Around the next bend, we’ve got five hundred yards to reach the house. There’s on
ly one small bend to give us cover, but aside from that it’s a kill zone.”

  Alfie’s aching limbs throbbed as he crouched next to Will. “Okay, just give me a few seconds.” He breathed in deeply several times, winced as he stood, patted one of his legs, and muttered to himself, “Five hundred yards and the house. That’s all I need from you, old boys. After that, you can both fall off for all I care.” He sucked in a big lungful of air, lifted his gun, and nodded. “Let’s get it over with.”

  Kronos saw Cochrane and Alfie run from cover toward the house, their guns held high.

  This was it.

  Assault.

  He swung his sniper rifle toward Schreiber’s house. Men emerged from the castle, sprinting, all of them carrying assault rifles. He counted six, then eight, then fifteen. They were expertly moving down the road, taking turns covering each other while others advanced.

  They opened fire.

  Five hundred yards away, Cochrane and Alfie dived to the ground and returned fire.

  Kronos placed his finger on the trigger.

  Move!” Will rolled sideways. Bullets ricocheted off the road, inches from their bodies, as Alfie and Will went right. They got to their feet and slammed their bodies flush against the escarpment. From across the valley, a heavy-caliber shot boomed. Then another, followed by a third. “That’s it! We’ve got to get to the last bend while he’s taking them down. Go!”

  Will sprinted forward, firing his submachine gun, knowing that he was easily in range of the men’s assault rifles and that his shorter-range bullets stood little chance of hitting them. Twelve men were spread out, four hundred yards ahead of him. One of them collapsed to the ground after a .50-caliber sniper round ripped half his head off his body. Will stopped, aimed, and sent controlled bursts toward the others.

  Alfie ran past him as fast as he could, wheezing heavily, shooting as he continued onward, before stopping, throwing himself to the ground, and continuing to shoot at the hostiles. “Move!”

  Will sprinted, just as Kronos fired two more shots and dropped two more men. The sound of gunfire was now deafening and almost continuous. Will raced past Alfie, reached the bend, and dived for cover as more bullets raced through the air where he’d just been. He glanced at Alfie, broke cover, and sent a sustained volley of machine gun fire at the remaining nine men. His bullets struck two men, who twisted and fell off the road down the mile-long drop into the valley. “Come on, Alfie! Now! Now!”