by Matthew Dunn
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 only 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!”
Alfie ran, his back screaming in pain from his exertions, toward the bend while Will continued firing long bursts toward their assailants from his exposed position.
Another boom from across the valley. Then two more.
Three men fell to the ground with holes the size of fists in their chests.
Alfie zigzagged toward Will. Just like he’d been taught to do by the regiment, though then he’d been able to move four times quicker. He reached the MI6 officer, who spun around, grabbed his jacket, and pulled them both to the cover of the bend’s escarpment. Bullets slammed into chunks of rock and sent debris flying through the air two feet from their position.
Will swapped magazines, waited a few seconds, then swung out of the bend and fired five-round bursts at the four men, one hundred yards away. One of them flipped backward with a line of machine gun rounds across his upper body. Will sidestepped back into cover as the men returned fire, and glanced at Alfie. “Hundred and fifty yards to the house, three men left out there, let’s wait.”
Kronos inserted a new magazine, breathed in, exhaled half a lungful, held his breath, and squeezed the trigger. One mile away, his bullet ripped through a hostile’s shoulder and exited through his face. He moved the rifle as the last two men started sprinting back toward the house, kept his sight’s crosshairs two feet in front of one of the men, and fired. The round smashed the man’s hipbone and ripped out half of his gut. His colleague was frantically trying to reach the house, moving erratically, keeping low. Kronos pulled the trigger. The .50-caliber projectile removed the lower half of one leg. The man fell prone, his screams audible from this distance, amplified by the valley and echoing over its contours. Kronos watched the man vainly trying to crawl over the remaining fifty yards of road in front of Schreiber’s residence. He ignored him for the moment, focused on the front door, fired twice, and saw his antimateriel rounds knock the entrance partially off its hinges. After putting in a fresh clip, he returned his attention to the injured man, took aim, and turned his brain into pulp.
Will and Alfie stepped away from the bend. One hundred and fifty yards ahead of them was the imposing grand entrance to Schreiber’s mountain residence. For the first few yards, they walked, their guns trained on the broken door, waiting for more men to spew out onto the road. Despite the icy mountain air, Will’s body was covered in sweat. He could barely imagine what state Alfie’s body was in.
“Gotta hope the German’s got that door covered, ’cos we’re screwed if he ain’t.”
Will’s eyes were narrow as he kept the foresight of his MP5 trained on the entrance. Another .50-caliber bullet knocked the broken door flat onto the ground. Will moved his gun. “That’s his answer. Watch the windows. Go, now!”
They jogged forward, gun sights searching for anyone who might fire at them from one of the ten windows on this side of the house.
Fifty yards.
No movement
Hundred yards.
Silence.
One hundred and twenty yards.
The top left window smashed. A man. Rifle. Will and Alfie fired. The hostile tumbled out of the window and thudded onto the ground.
They reached the entrance, Will moved flush against the wall to one side of it, Alfie the other.
Alfie slammed in a new magazine. “There’ll be as many inside. Wish we ’ad them flash bangs, sunshine.”
“Me too. If he wasn’t using it before, Kronos will be switching to thermal now. We’ve got to keep some distance between us and the hostiles so he knows who we are. Take it slow.”
Will spun into the doorway, his MP5 held at eye level. Alfie moved behind him. They entered Schreiber’s residence.
Mr. Schreiber! They’ve reached the house. Get to the back of the living room. I’ve got men outside the room. But for God’s sake, stay down. Somewhere out there is a sniper. He’s clearing a path for Cochrane and Mayne so that they can get here and kill you.”
Schreiber smiled. “Make sure your men stay on the north side of the house, out of sight of the sniper. That way, it should be impossible for my two visitors to reach this room. But if they do, I’ll talk to them and watch them walk away after leaving me untouched.”
Will and Alfie kept low as they moved along the corridor, taking long strides and placing their feet flat on the red-carpeted floor in order not to bounce and move their weapons from their steady horizontal level. The house had been tastefully decorated, with paintings and oil lamps covering the oak-paneled walls, and it was big—the corridor ran for seventy yards. Closed doors lined both sides. As they reached the first door, Alfie rotated and walked backward, ready to shoot anyone who burst out of the rooms. All was silent, though they knew that somewhere in the house would be armed men.
They reached the end of the corridor. Will lay on his front and quickly glanced around the corner. Getting to his feet, he cupped a hand around Alfie’s ear. “Another corridor. Forty yards long. Two closed doors on the left. Big staircase halfway along on the right. No sight of any hostiles.”
They turned the corner. Immediately, the door to the closest room opened and they caught a brief sight of an arm. It threw something toward them—a small object that was now rolling along the carpet.
Grenade.
Will sprinted forward, dropped low, scooped up the grenade, and tossed it back toward the open door. The explosive detonated as it reached the doorway, and shrapnel and blood smashed against the opposite wall.
Will moved forward, checked the room, saw two men’s smashed bodies, and gestured for Alfie to follow him onward. They reached the s
econd door. Will pointed at it and his weapon. Alfie understood the meaning of the gesture. Will raised three fingers, then two, then one. Both men stepped in front of the door and fired a sustained burst of machine gun fire through the wooden entrance. Will kicked the door open. One man was lying over a table with bullet holes in his throat and an eye socket. Another was slumped against a wall, his handgun discarded to one side, clutching his shoulder, his face screwed up in agony. Without hesitating, Will shot him in the chest and head.
They exited the room. Search the rest of this floor or move upstairs? Will took a step forward a split second before a shot rang out and grazed his shoulder. It had come from somewhere up the staircase. Though it could have killed him had he not moved, the shot had given him his answer. More armed men were upstairs to protect Schreiber. Momentarily wincing from the injury, Will raised his weapon and took slow steps toward the base of the stairwell. Alfie moved to his left and aimed his weapon to one side of the stairs. Will focused on the other side. They took another step. Three men appeared at the top of the stairs.
