They took cover. Jaeger triggered the fuse, and instantaneously there was a sharp explosion, a thick cloud of smoke and debris billowing through the air. The trapdoor was now a blasted ruin.
Narov lobbed the gas canister into the smoke-filled interior. Jaeger counted down the seconds, allowing the gas to take hold before lowering his frame through and letting himself drop. He hit the deck, taking the impact on his knees, and immediately had his gun in the aim, sweeping the room with the flashlight attached to the weapon. Through the thick fog of gas in the air he could see two figures lying on the floor, comatose.
Narov dropped in next to him and Jaeger swept his torch over the two unconscious men. ‘Check them.’
As Narov went to do so, he slid around the wall towards the back of the room, where there was a small alcove containing a heavy wooden chest. He reached out with his gloved hand and pulled at the handle, but the chest was locked.
Screw searching for the key.
He placed both hands on the handle and a foot against the front, tensed his shoulder muscles and yanked with all his might. With a snapping of wood the lid came away from its hinges. Jaeger threw it to one side and flashed his torch inside.
In the depths of the chest lay a large formless bundle wrapped in an old sheet. He reached in and heaved it up, feeling the distinctive weight of a human body inside, then lowered it gently to the floor. When he peeled away the sheet, he found himself gazing into Leticia Santos’s face.
They’d found her. She was unconscious, and by the looks of her ravaged features Vladimir and his crew had put her through hell these past few days. Jaeger didn’t even want to think what they had done to her. But at least she was alive.
Behind him, Narov was checking the second body, just to make sure he was dead to the world. Like many of Vladimir’s gunmen, this one was wearing body armour; no doubt about it, they had been a serious bunch of operators.
But as she rolled the cumbersome figure on to his back, her flashlight glinted on something that had been left lying beneath him on the floor. It was spherical and metallic, about the size of a man’s fist, its outer surface segmented into scores of tiny squares.
‘GRENADE!’
Jaeger whirled about, taking in the threat in a matter of instants. The gunman had set a trap. Believing himself to be dying, he’d pulled the pin on a grenade and lain himself on top of it, keeping the clip in place with his own body weight.
‘TAKE COVER!’ Jaeger yelled, scooping Leticia up and diving for the shelter of the alcove.
Ignoring him completely, Narov slammed the figure back down on to the grenade, throwing herself on top of him to shield herself from the explosion.
There was a massive, searing detonation. Narov was catapulted into the air by the blast, the force of which hurled Jaeger further into the alcove, his head smashing against the wall.
A bolt of agony shot through him… and seconds later his whole world went black.
10
Jaeger turned left, taking the exit leading into London’s Harley Street, one of the city’s most exclusive districts. Three weeks had passed since their Cuban mission, and he was still stiff and in pain from the injuries he’d suffered in the villa, but his blackout had been only momentary: his mask had saved his head from worse injury.
It was Narov who had taken the real pounding. In the enclosed environment of the cellar, she’d had no option but to dive on the grenade. She’d used the gunman’s bulk, plus his body armour, to shield them from the blast, allowing Jaeger an instant to get Leticia into some cover.
Jaeger came to a halt opposite the Biowell Clinic, tucking his Triumph Tiger Explorer into one of the free parking places reserved for motorcycles. The Explorer was fast through the traffic, and he rarely failed to find a vacant parking space. It was one of the joys of navigating the city on two wheels. He shrugged off his battered Belstaff jacket, stripping down to his shirtsleeves.
Spring was in the air, the leafy plane trees that lined London’s streets bursting into leaf. If he had to be in the city – as opposed to the open wild of the countryside – this was about his favourite time of year to be here.
He’d just got news that Narov was conscious again and had eaten her first solid meal. In fact the surgeon had even mentioned the possibility of releasing her from his care sometime soon.
No doubt about it, Narov was tough.
Getting off that Cuban island had proved something of a challenge. Having come to after the grenade blast, Jaeger had stumbled to his feet and hoisted both Narov and Leticia Santos out of the cellar. Then he and Raff had carried the two women out of the gas-choked building, making their getaway through the villa grounds.
The assault had turned very noisy very fast, and Jaeger didn’t know who else on that island might have heard the gunfire. The alarm had most likely been raised, and their priority was to get the hell out of there. Vladimir and his lot would be left to explain it all to the Cuban authorities.
They’d headed for the nearby dock, where the kidnappers kept an ocean-going rigid inflatable boat. They’d loaded Narov and Santos aboard, fired up the RIB’s powerful twin 350-horsepower engines and headed east towards the British territory of the Turks and Caicos Islands, a 180-kilometre ride across the intervening stretch of ocean. Jaeger knew the governor of the islands personally, and he’d be expecting them.
Once they hit the open sea, Jaeger and Raff had stabilised Narov, stemming her bleeding. They’d laid her in the recovery position, making her and Leticia comfortable at the back of the RIB, cushioned by a pile of lifejackets.
That done, they’d gone about ditching the bulk of their kit. Weapons, CBRN suits, respirators, explosives, Kolokol-1 canisters – anything that might link back to the mission – had all been dumped overboard.
By the time they’d made landfall, there was little left to associate them with any military action. They had the appearance of four civilian pleasure-boaters who had run into a little trouble at sea.
They’d made sure they’d left no trail to follow back on the island, gathering up the used Kolokol-1 canisters. All that was left behind was a few dozen untraceable 9mm casings. Even their footprints had been masked by their CBRN overboots. There had been CCTV cameras in the villa, but once Raff had fried the electric circuitry, there had been no power. In any case, Jaeger would challenge anyone to ID him and his team through their respirators.
All that remained was their three parachutes, and even they should drift out to sea with the prevailing tides.
Any way Jaeger looked at it, they were clean.
As they’d powered across the calm, night-dark ocean, he’d spared a thought for the fact that he was still alive; that all his team were. He’d felt that warm buzz – that incredible rush – of entering a deadly kill zone and surviving.
Life never seemed more real than in the moments after it had very nearly been taken away from you.
Perhaps because of that, an image had come unbidden into his mind. Of Ruth – dark-haired, green-eyed, with fine, almost delicate features, an air of Celtic mystery about her; of Luke – eight years of age and even then the spitting image of his father.
Luke would be eleven now, his twelfth birthday just a few months away. He was a July baby, and they’d always managed to celebrate his birthday somewhere magical, for it fell midway through the summer holidays.
Jaeger spooled through the birthday memories in his mind: carrying a two-year-old Luke across the Giant’s Causeway on Ireland’s wild west coast; surfing off the Portuguese beaches when Luke was six; trekking through the snowy wastes of Mont Blanc when he was eight.