Jaeger smiled. ‘I’ll go tell my guys to get ready for the jump.’
5
The C-130 roared in low and fast, skimming the night-dark wave crests.
Jaeger and his team were poised at the open ramp, the fierce blasts of the aircraft’s slipstream howling around their ears. Outside was a sea of raging darkness.
Here and there Jaeger could see a flash of seething white as the aircraft passed low over a reef, the waves breaking wild across its surface. The target island was also ringed with jagged coral – terrain that they would do best to avoid. Water would provide a relatively soft landing, coral a leg-shattering one. All being well, Jaeger’s intended jump point would get them into the ocean inside the innermost reef, and just a short distance from the shoreline.
Once the C-130 pilot had been persuaded that he had no option but to fly the mission, he’d signed up to it more or less wholeheartedly. And right now Jaeger could tell that these guys truly were what they claimed to be – former Night Stalkers.
The chill night air swirled into the hold as the four hook-bladed propellers hammered away to either side. The pilot was flying at close to wave-top height, throwing the massive machine around as if it was a Formula 1 racing car.
The effect in the dark and echoing hold would have been puke-inducing were Jaeger and his team not so used to such a ride.
He turned to his two fellow operators. Takavesi ‘Raff’ Raffara was a massive hunk of a man – a rock-hard Maori and one of Jaeger’s closest friends from their years in the SAS. A totally bulletproof operator, Raff was the man Jaeger would choose to fight back-to-back with if ever the shit went down. He would trust Raff – who wore his long hair braided, traditional Maori style – with his life. He’d done so many a time when they’d soldiered together over the years, and again more recently, when Raff had come to rescue Jaeger from drink and ruin at the ends of the earth.
The second operator was a quiet, sylph-like figure, blonde hair whipping around her fine features in the tearing slipstream. A former Russian special forces operator, Irina Narov was striking-looking and unflappable, and she had proved herself many times during their expedition to the Amazon. But that didn’t mean Jaeger had got the measure of her, or found her any the less troublesome.
Oddly, though, he’d almost come to trust her; to rely upon her. Despite her awkward and sometimes downright maddening manner, in her own way she was as bulletproof reliable as Raff. And at times she’d proved herself just as deadly – a cold, calculating killer without equal.
Nowadays Narov lived in New York and had taken American citizenship. She’d explained to Jaeger that she operated off-grid, working with some international outfit whose identity he had yet to fully get to grips with. It stank of shady, but it was that outfit – Narov’s people – who had bankrolled the present undertaking: rescuing Leticia Santos. And right now that was all Jaeger cared about.
Then there were Narov’s mysterious links to Jaeger’s family, and in particular to his late lamented grandfather, William Edward ‘Ted’ Jaeger. Grandpa Ted had served with British special forces during the Second World War, inspiring Jaeger to go into the military. Narov claimed to have regarded Grandpa Ted as her own grandfather, and to be working in his name and memory today.
It made little sense to Jaeger. He’d never heard anyone in his family make the barest mention of Narov, Grandpa Ted included. At the end of their Amazon expedition he’d vowed to get some answers from her; to break the enigma she embodied. Yet the present rescue mission had had to take priority.
Via Narov’s people and their contacts in the Cuban underworld, Jaeger’s team had been able to monitor the location where Leticia Santos was being held. They’d been fed useful intelligence, and as a bonus they’d been passed a detailed description of Vladimir himself.
But worryingly, in the last few days Leticia had been moved, from a relatively low-security villa to the remote offshore island. The guard had been doubled, and Jaeger was worried that if they moved her again he might lose her completely.
There was a fourth figure in the C-130’s hold. The loadmaster was roped tight to the aircraft’s side, so he could perch on the ramp without being torn out by the raging slipstream. He pressed his headphones closer as he listened to a message from the pilot. Nodding his understanding, he got to his feet and flashed five fingers in front of their faces: five minutes to the jump.
Jaeger, Raff and Narov levered themselves to their feet. The success of the coming mission would rely on three things: speed, aggression and surprise – ‘SAS’ for short, the unofficial slogan of special forces operators. For that reason it was vital that they were light on their feet and could move swiftly and silently across the island. Accordingly, their kit had been kept to the absolute minimum.
Apart from their LLP parachute, each team member carried a backpack containing Kolokol-1 grenades, explosives, water, emergency rations, a medical kit and a small, sharp-bladed axe. The rest of the space was taken up by their CBRN protective suits and respirators.
When Jaeger had first served in the military, the emphasis had all been on NBC: nuclear, biological and chemical. Now it was CBRN – chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear – the new terminology reflecting the new world order. When the Soviet Union had been the enemy of the West, the top threat was nuclear. But in a fractured world rife with rogue states and terrorist groups, chemical and biological warfare – or more likely terrorism – was the new priority threat.
Jaeger, Raff and Narov each carried a SIG P228, with an extended twenty-round magazine, plus six mags of spare ammo. And each had their blade. Narov’s was a Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife, a razor-sharp weapon for up-close killing. It was a highly distinctive weapon that had had been issued to British commandos during the war. Her attachment to that blade was another of the mysteries that so intrigued Jaeger.
But tonight, no one was intending to use bullets or blades to take care of the enemy. The quieter and cleaner they could keep this, the better. Let the Kolokol-1 do its silent work.
Jaeger checked his watch: three minutes out from the drop. ‘You ready?’ he yelled. ‘Remember, give the gas time to take hold.’
He got a nod and a thumbs up. Raff and Narov were absolute pros – the best – and he didn’t detect the slightest hint of nerves. Sure, they were outnumbered ten-to-one, but he figured the Kolokol-1 evened up the odds a little. Of course, no one was exactly relishing using the gas. But sometimes, as Narov argued, you used a lesser evil to fight a greater one.
As he psyched himself up for the jump Jaeger felt a niggling worry, though: there were never any guarantees when doing an LLP.
When serving in the SAS, he’d spent a great deal of time trialling cutting-edge, space-age equipment. Working with the Joint Air Transport Establishment (the JATE) – a secretive outfit overseeing James Bond-like air-insertion techniques – he’d leapt from the very highest altitudes possible.
But recently the British military had developed a very different kind of concept. Instead of jumping from the edge of the earth’s atmosphere, the LLP was designed to enable a paratrooper to leap at near-zero altitude and still survive.
In theory, it allowed a jump height of some 250 feet, so keeping the aircraft well below radar level. In short, it enabled a force to fly into hostile territory with little risk of detection – hence why they were using it on tonight’s mission.
With split seconds in which to deploy, the LLP chute was designed to have a flat and wide profile, to catch the maximum air. But even so, it still required a rocket-assisted pack to get the chute to fully deploy before the jumper splashed down. And even with that rocket pack – in essence, a release mechanism that blasted your parachute high into the air – you still had barely five seconds in which to slow your descent and make landfall.