Terminal Velocity

by Andy McNab

  He forced himself to focus on the job and getting it done. He could deal with the repercussions of everything he’d experienced once it was over. And glancing round at the rest of the team gave him a confidence boost. They were all kitted up ready for the jump; black from top to bottom, including war paint and helmets with full-face visors, self-inflating lifejackets just in case, throat mics and torches to check their canopies once deployed. In addition, and because of Gabe’s warning about the possibility of more x-rays being around after Ethan’s daring escape, they were carrying plastic tags to deal with them, and flash-bang and smoke grenades, which were only to be used as a last measure. Outside, the night was drawing in.

  A voice buzzed on everyone’s throat mic. It was Sam on the chat-net.

  ‘Right, listen up. It looks as if the weather’s taking a turn for the worse, but we’re going in anyway.’

  Johnny squeezed his throat mic. ‘What do you mean by “Turn for the worse”? Overcast with the risk of a shower or two, or the sky falling on our heads?’

  ‘You’ll be jumping in the rain,’ said Sam, ‘so shift it. We’re going now.’

  Everyone heard the sound of a helicopter starting up, and as Ethan ran out with the rest of the team into the darkening evening, he saw the blades beginning to turn, Sam at the controls.

  Luke’s voice came over the chat-net.

  ‘Once we’re aboard, everyone double-check their kit. And remember, when we exit, we’ll be doing it in formation as a star, just like we practised earlier, with Johnny between Ethan and me, not circling like he would if we were at a competition. And watch your fall rate, everyone. Understood?’

  The team pinched their throat mics twice, the double beep acknowledging they’d all heard what Luke had said and understood it.

  ‘Good. When it’s time to deploy, we’ll star burst so everyone can find safe air. Then – and seeing as this really is the one thing we should all know how to do – it’s just a case of landing safely without breaking a limb.’

  ‘Or drowning,’ said Kat.

  The helicopter bucked a little as the rain came in heavier. It blew through where the team were sat and Ethan hunched himself against it. It was seriously cold.

  ‘Ethan?’

  It was Luke on the chat-net again.

  ‘You’re on point. We all know the layout, but you know this place. It’s why you’re here: getting us to the room with the server is your responsibility. Any x-rays, leave to Natalya and Johnny to deal with. Understand?’

  ‘OK,’ said Ethan. ‘How long have we got before we get to the DZ?’

  Sam’s voice fizzed in. ‘Five minutes! Ready yourselves. I want you in the air sharpish and the exit smooth.’

  The team all slid to one side of the helicopter. Johnny and Luke stood outside on the helicopter’s landing runner, holding onto the roof until the time came to jump.

  A few moments later Sam called again: ‘Thirty seconds!’

  Ethan felt the helicopter slowing, his legs dangling over the side. He grabbed hold of Kat’s arm – she was sitting on his left – and reached up for Johnny’s arm on his right. Everyone else linked in. All that remained was for Luke and Johnny to link when the time came to jump.

  Then suddenly Sam called through with: ‘Move it!’

  A sharp nod from Luke as he grabbed hold of Johnny. Then the team tumbled into the black.

  Picking up speed, the team soon stabilized, even though there were five of them linked together. Ethan felt the rain sting his hands like he was being attacked by wasps, but he ignored the pain; he’d had a lot worse than that over the past few weeks.

  He looked at the rest of the team; in the thick darkness, all he could make out was five skydiving helmets, each one laced with streaks of rain. It felt as though they were floating; everything about them was pure, drenched blackness.

  Ethan caught sight of lights far off; towns and villages beaming into the night in a definite line stretching left and right along the coast. The DZ was somewhere below them, a tiny black dot in an angry sea. He was looking for that faint red ‘H’ of the helipad, but he couldn’t see it! Where the hell was it? So much for the ambient light, Johnny had mentioned; he could see jack shit!

  A signal came from Luke. Ethan knew this meant that at the next ping from his audible altimeter the formation would split. Then he’d be on his own. He hoped to God he’d soon spot the DZ, otherwise he was in for a wet landing and crappy swim.

  The ping came all too quickly.

  The team exploded outwards, all shooting off in different directions to find safe air. Even though none of them were wearing LEDs, Ethan still double-checked the air above and around him before he deployed his canopy. The sound of it blasting open above his head wasn’t as much a relief as was the sight that caught his eyes immediately beneath him once he’d slowed down to descent speed. It was the dimly lit helipad on the fortress, the DZ: a strange dark shape just sitting in the water waiting for them to arrive.

  And Ethan was first.

  As he came in to the DZ, he drove all thought from his head about it being in the middle of the sea, that on all sides was a high drop to waves that could crush him in seconds, and focused on his landing. He adjusted his steering lines, turned in, adjusted again … this was it …

  Ethan heaved on his steering lines to kill his canopy at the last second and bring himself to a gentle touchdown on the DZ. If he’d been anywhere else he’d have yelled out in triumph, but he kept his mouth shut, deflated his canopy, rolled it all up. He pulled a silk stuff sack out of a pocket and stowed his rig and helmet inside it; that would make it easier to chuck onto the helicopter when Sam came to collect them. Then he got out of the way of the rest of the team coming in.

  He headed over immediately to the door he remembered all too well; the last time he’d been here he’d been running for his life. It wasn’t the kind of place he’d quickly forget. He also wanted to make sure that if anyone came through it, he was there to sort them out. And after the way the instructors had pushed him around, he wasn’t going to hold back if they did.

  Like huge black seagulls, Ethan watched the team come in to land in quick succession and soon they were all standing with him. Without a word spoken, Luke dropped to the bottom of door. Ethan watched him pull from a trouser pocket what looked like a length of thick, black wire and slip it under the door – the optical cable. A few moments later he removed it, stowed it and pulled out something that looked like a small drill – the lock gun. Luke placed this to the lock and Ethan heard the satisfying click of it giving in nice and easy. Luke then stood up and opened the door like the perfect host or butler.

  ‘Over to you, Ethan; we’re right behind you.’

  Despite the serious nature of what they were now doing, hearing that from Luke made Ethan grin. The team were depending on him now, and he wasn’t going to let them down.

  It wasn’t difficult to head straight to the computer room. The layout was simple and he’d been recalling it, drawing it and studying it since his escape. He hated knowing that lying just a couple of floors below them were the rest of the abductees, and he could do nothing to help them. But he knew Sam was right – they had to leave that job to the ones with the firepower. But it didn’t make him feel any better.

  Ethan led the team down the corridor, all of them silent as ghosts. At the door to the room with the server he nodded to Kat who slipped forward.

  ‘Well, this was a lot easier than I was expecting,’ whispered Johnny. ‘Usually there’s at least one bad guy to slug it out with.’

  The team slipped in behind Kat as she crept into the room. So far they’d neither seen nor heard anything of any possible x-rays. Ethan was relieved; now that he was here, he wanted to get out as quickly as possible.

  Kat was soon working at a keyboard and plugging in a small, rubber-covered black box.

  Ethan asked, ‘How long will this take?’

  ‘Only a few minutes,’ said Natalya, allowing Kat to concentrate. ‘Thou
gh this does depend on how much information Kat is trying to download and if she has any security systems to bypass. And then, of course, she will be uploading a virus to scramble the whole system.’

  The team waited in silence as Kat did her thing. Ethan was impressed; she was completely focused on what she was doing and looked amazingly calm.

  ‘Done!’

  Ethan and the rest looked over to see Kat stowing her portable hard drive in a pocket.

  ‘Then let’s get out quick,’ said Ethan. ‘I don’t like the fact we’re leaving anyone in this place while we skip out on a helicopter. But at least if we get out fast then the rescue op can be initiated, right?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Luke. ‘And don’t worry, Ethan; Gabe and Sam have things sorted. This place is as good as dead already and everyone is going to be safe within the hour. OK?’

  ‘I guess,’ said Ethan. Luke was right, he knew that, but it was still difficult for him to forget all the boys below them in the fort. He knew what they were feeling, how their life had become little more than surviving day to day with no hope of getting out. ‘Come on, then,’ he said, forcing himself to focus on the fact that the UKSF would be in only minutes after their exit, ‘let’s get shifting.’

  Still lost in his thoughts, Ethan opened the door. He found himself face-to-face with one of the instructors.

  The man didn’t exactly look pleased to see him.

  27

  ‘You!’

  Ethan froze: it was the instructor he’d taken down in the shower block during his escape and, despite his own face being broken up with streaks of black paint, the bloke still obviously recognized him. Crap.

  Confusion was written across the instructor’s face. And that moment of hesitation, Ethan knew, was his downfall: Natalya sprang forward, past Ethan, and slammed into the instructor. He had no time to react, respond or cry out. A blur of movement and he dropped to the floor, close to unconscious. Luke had him gagged and tagged before he had a chance to recover. Natalya, Ethan saw, wasn’t even out of breath.

  ‘He wasn’t expecting to see you, was he?’ said Natalya, and Ethan was sure he saw a flicker of a smirk on her usually calm face. ‘Particularly as you are supposed to be dead.’

  An alarm sounded.

  ‘Bollocks!’

  ‘Fair point, Eth,’ said Johnny.

  ‘But how did he sound an alarm?’ asked Kat, stepping forward. ‘He’s alone and Natalya had him out of the game before he’d had a chance to even register what was going on.’

  The sound of a door slipping shut cracked the conversation like a smashed bottle.

  ‘There!’ hissed Luke, pointing further on down the corridor to the door Ethan knew led to the rest of the facility. ‘We’ve been pinged!’

  ‘I think he came from the staff room,’ said Ethan. ‘Reckon there’s anyone else in there?’

  ‘If there was,’ said Luke, ‘then I would guess it was them who set the alarm and bolted.’ He turned to Kat. ‘We need to get a move on. Whoever that alarm’s called, I’m not exactly in a hurry to meet them.’

  Suddenly Johnny called from a far corner of the room where he was pointing at a computer screen, showing what looked like CCTV footage.

  ‘Where’s this, Eth? You didn’t mention a dock.’

  Ethan jogged over and saw on the screen a man in a vaulted space, obviously in the very bowels of the structure. It had a small stone landing, attached to which was a serious-looking power boat sat in inky sea water.

  ‘That’s because I’ve never seen it before.’ Then Ethan recognized the man on the screen. ‘That’s the bastard who runs this place: Chief. The ex-Israeli special forces guy Sam mentioned right at the start, remember? What’s he doing?’

  ‘Escaping, by the look of it,’ said Johnny. ‘And that’s not really playing fair, is it?’

  ‘No,’ said Ethan. ‘I mean, what he’s actually doing right this minute. Look – he’s fiddling with something. Looks like a large box or container. What is it?’

  They both knew exactly what it was, but it took Kat, who’d dashed over to see what they were looking at, to say it.

  ‘Oh, God, that’s a bomb. This place is rigged to blow!’

  ‘That is not all,’ said Natalya. ‘Look here also.’

  The team turned as one and there, on a screen, was the cage. Two boys were inside it and both were on the floor, one kneeling, the other flat out, trying to push himself back to his feet. Ethan recognized the boy lying on the floor immediately.

  ‘Shit – it’s Rick.’

  Luke tried to hurry everyone along. ‘Sam will be expecting us up top any minute. We need to move!’

  Ethan felt his stomach churn; if Rick didn’t get to his feet and the fight was judged to be over, he’d suffer the same fate as the one Ethan had been in the cage with himself. The thought of it sent him cold.

  ‘I’m not leaving Rick to get murdered,’ said Ethan.

  ‘And we can’t walk away from that either,’ said Kat, looking at the image of the bomb on the screen.

  ‘Gabe won’t be pleased,’ said Luke. ‘It’s seriously off mission.’

  Kat flared at this. ‘Are you suggesting we just let this place blow? There’s probably enough explosive not just to damage this place, but to blow it sky-high!’

  ‘She’s right,’ said Johnny. ‘That thing goes off, it’ll kill everyone.’

  Luke turned to Ethan. ‘Well, where is it, then? Ethan, you said you’d never seen that place before.’

  ‘No, I haven’t,’ said Ethan. ‘But it must be right in the depths of this place. I’ve never seen a door for it though.’ Then he had a hunch. ‘The cage!’

  ‘What about it?’ asked Johnny.

  ‘I forgot,’ said Ethan. ‘There’s a door the other side of the cage room. I bet that leads down there; it’d be an easy way to dispose of the loser’s body, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Makes sense,’ said Luke.

  Ethan didn’t wait for any further discussion. He headed to the door and was back out in the hall, going back the way they’d come in. The team were on his heels.

  ‘It’s that door there,’ he said with a nod. ‘The one on the left.’ But as he reached it, he hesitated.

  ‘You OK, Eth?’ asked Johnny.

  Ethan nodded. ‘I swore I’d never go back in here,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll go first,’ Johnny offered.

  Ethan didn’t give him a chance and slammed a boot into the lock. The door burst inwards and Ethan charged through, not thinking about what was on the other side. He knew only that every extra second he wasted was another second closer to this place going sky-high and all those down below being wiped out.

  The place was dark, but spotlights were on and the sound of cameras took Ethan right back to his fight. He shook the memory from his mind, saw the cage and caught sight of another door in the wall behind it. Then, as he made to go to the cage, two instructors appeared out of the darkness like a picture coming into focus. Gabe, thought Ethan, had been on the nail about the additional security.

  Using the full weight of his body at speed, Ethan rammed into them. Neither had time to dodge and were sent stumbling backwards. Johnny was on one before he could respond. Ethan heard the instructor drop to the floor with a moan, but didn’t look to see what Johnny had done; the other instructor was getting to his feet. Ethan was into him before he had a chance to react, launching a kick at his stomach. The instructor took the blow like a pro, and came back at Ethan, who found himself suddenly on the ground, looking into the eyes of a man who was about to pummel him senseless. Ethan blocked a barrage of punches then got lucky with a return punch under the instructor’s chin; it crunched his jaw together and Ethan knew he’d broken some teeth. With a twist of his hips, Ethan managed to flip the instructor off and onto his side, but before he landed, he grabbed his shirt and nutted him one. The instructor’s nose exploded and he fell to the floor, dazed and confused and bleeding.

  Ethan, relieved, saw Johnny nod at him.r />
  ‘I’ll tag them,’ said Johnny, ‘you sort the lads in the cage.’ Johnny then looked back to Luke and the two girls. ‘You lot, head across to the door opposite and get to that bomb! I’m in no mood to be blown up.’

  As Johnny grabbed some plastic ties from a pocket, Ethan and the rest of the team did exactly as he had said. Ethan saw them dash past the cage to the other door, pulling it behind them. He then turned his attention to the cage, made to head over, but a movement caught his eye. It was another instructor, who’d obviously kept himself hidden in the shadows and was making to sneak out.

  Two things then happened. One, Ethan saw that the man was carrying a pistol; he knew it would have been used to dispatch the loser of the fight, in this case, Rick, but he’d obviously been disturbed by the alarm. And two, the man realized Ethan had seen him.

  The instructor stopped, went to draw his weapon.

  In normal circumstances, Ethan would’ve got the hell out of the way. But this was different. He closed the gap. By the time the weapon was at the ready, Ethan was close enough to deal with it, grabbing it with his left hand and driving the pistol down into the stomach of the instructor. It was a drill he’d done dozens of times with Natalya, and he went through it like clockwork. Before the instructor was able to react to what was happening, he had a broken nose, his pistol had been snatched from his hand, snapping a finger in the process, and he was on the floor.

  Ethan was now holding the pistol. It felt heavy in his hand. Solid and deadly. But he’d never used a pistol in his life. And wasn’t about to start now. He tossed it behind him and into the dark.

  The instructor was dazed and was trying to use his head to give himself enough leverage to stand. It was doing no good at all and Johnny, slipping past Ethan, tagged his hands and feet.

  ‘Grab his jacket first,’ said Ethan. ‘Those two in the cage need it more than he does.’

  Taking the jacket, Ethan headed over to the cage. The door was open; they really had got there just in time, he thought, looking back at the instructor who’d had the pistol. Just a minute more and he’d have been in the cage to use the weapon on Rick and finish him off for good. He climbed in. Johnny joined him.