‘NAME!’ the voice snarled. It was right beside his ear now. ‘Let’s hear your bastard name!’
The speaker was hidden from Jaeger, but the voice sounded foreign, and thick with some Eastern European accent. For a terrible moment Jaeger had visions of the gang who’d suffered the Kolokol-1 attack – Vladimir and his lot – taking him captive. But surely it couldn’t be them, for how in God’s name would they have found him?
Think, Jaeger. Fast.
‘NAME!’ the voice yelled again. ‘NAME!’
Jaeger’s throat was dry with shock and fear. He managed to rasp out the one word: ‘Jaeger.’
The men holding him slammed his face into the nearest headlamp, leaving his features scrunched up tight against the glass.
‘Both names. Both bastard names!’
‘Will. William Jaeger.’ He coughed out the words through a mouthful of blood.
‘So, this is better, William Jaeger.’ The same voice, sinister and predatory, but a fraction calmer now. ‘Now you tell me: what are names of the rest of your crew?’
Jaeger said nothing. No way would he answer. But he could sense the anger and aggression rising again.
‘One more time: what are the names of the rest of your crew?’
From somewhere Jaeger found his voice. ‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’
He felt his head being wrenched backwards, then his face was rammed into the forest dirt, deeper than it had been before. He tried to hold his breath as the insults and curses began again, punctuated by expertly aimed kicks and blows. Whoever his captors were, they sure knew how to hurt someone.
Finally he was pulled upright and the bag was yanked over his head once more.
The voice spat out a command. ‘Lose him. He’s no use if he won’t talk. You know what to do.’
Jaeger was dragged around to what had to be the rear of the vehicle. He was lifted up and hurled aboard. Hands forced him into a sitting position – legs out straight, arms linked behind his back.
Then silence. Just the rasp of his own laboured breathing.
The minutes dragged on. Jaeger could sense – taste – the metallic tang of his own fear. Eventually he had to try to shift position, in an effort to ease his aching limbs.
Slam! Someone booted him in the stomach. Not a word had been spoken. He was forced back into the same seated pose. He knew now that in spite of the spikes of pain, he was not permitted to move. He’d been put into a stress position, one designed to deliver a relentless and unendurable torture.
Without warning, the vehicle gave a sudden lurch and began to move. The unexpected motion threw Jaeger on to his front. Instantly he was booted around the head. He dragged himself into position again, but moments later the truck hit a ditch and he was catapulted on to his back. Again, elbows and fists rained down, driving his head into the cold metal skin of the vehicle.
Finally one of his tormentors dragged him back into the same stress position as before. The pain was intense. His head throbbed, his lungs were bursting and he was still winded from the beating. He felt as if his heart was about to explode out of his chest. Fear and panic gripped him.
Jaeger knew he’d been captured by utter professionals. The question was, who were they exactly?
And where in God’s name were they taking him?
17
The truck ride seemed to take forever, jolting along rutted tracks and rattling over rough ground. In spite of the pain he was in, at least it gave Jaeger time to think. Someone must have betrayed them. No one could have found them in the Falkenhagen Bunker otherwise, that was for certain.
Was it Narov? If not, who else had known where they were meeting? None of the team had been informed of their end destination. All they’d been told was that they would be collected from the airport.
But why? After all they’d been through, why would Narov have sold him out? And to whom?
All of a sudden the truck slowed to a stop. Jaeger heard the rear door being hinged open. He tensed. Hands grabbed him by the legs and hauled him out, letting him drop. He tried to use his arms to break the fall, but still his head cannoned into the ground.
Jesus, that hurt.
He was dragged away, pulled along by his feet like an animal carcass, his head and torso ploughing through the dirt. From the brightness filtering in through the bag, he could tell that it was daylight. Otherwise, he had lost all sense of time.
He heard a door being wrenched open and he was booted inside some kind of building. It went suddenly dark again. A terrifying sense of total blackness. Then he heard the familiar whir of a lift motor and felt the floor beneath him drop away. He was in an elevator, going deep.
Finally, the movement stopped. Jaeger was dragged out and propelled through a series of sharp right-angled turns – some kind of twisting corridor, he figured. Then a door opened, unleashing a tsunami of deafening sound. It was as if a TV had been left on tuned to nothing, blasting out electronic interference – so-called white noise – at top volume.
He was gripped beneath the armpits and dragged backwards into the white-noise room. His hands were cut free and his clothes were torn away from him with such force that the buttons flew off. He was left in nothing but his boxers; even his shoes were gone.
He was manoeuvred into a position facing the wall, his hands against the cold brickwork but balanced only on the tips of his fingers. His captors kicked his legs further and further backwards until he was suspended at what felt like a sixty-degree angle on fingertips and toes.
Footsteps stomped away. Utter silence, apart from his own pained and laboured breathing.
Was there anyone but him here any more?
Did he have company?
There was no way of telling.
Years back, Jaeger had been put through simulated resistance-to-interrogation training, as part of the selection process when joining the SAS. It was designed to test your resolve under pressure, and to train you how to cope with captivity. It had been thirty-six hours of hell, but he’d always known it was only an exercise.
This, by contrast, was very real and terrifying.
His shoulder muscles started to burn, his fingers cramping, as all the while the deafening white noise pounded into his skull. He wanted to cry out with the pain, but his mouth was still taped shut. All he could do was scream and yell inside his own head.
Eventually it was the finger cramps that got too much for him. The pain seared through his hands, the muscles tensing so hard it felt as if his fingers would be ripped from their very sockets. For an instant he relaxed, pressing his palms against the wall. It was blissful relief to allow them to take his full weight. But the next moment he doubled over as a jabbing bolt of pain shot up his spine.
Jaeger screamed, but it came out as a muffled yelp. He was far from alone in here, and someone had just applied an electrode – a cattle prod? – to the small of his back.
With brute savagery he was kicked back into his former position. Not a word had been said, but there was no misunderstanding the situation: if he tried to move or relax, they’d jab him with the electrode.
It wasn’t long before his arms and legs began to shake uncontrollably. At the very moment when he felt he couldn’t go on, his feet were booted out from under him, and he collapsed to the floor like a dead man. There was absolutely no let-up. Hands grabbed him like a lump of meat, forcing him into the sitting position he’d adopted in the truck, but this time with his arms folded in front of him.