He made his way back to Luke, who hadn’t moved from the firing position, his rifle aimed firmly at the front door of the house. ‘Anything?’ Chet whispered.
Luke shook his head.
They gave it a minute. A minute for raised voices or someone inside to walk out and check the genny. A minute for them to walk into a flying bullet from Luke’s suppressed M16.
No one came.
Why was no one coming?
Chet spoke into the radio. ‘Sean, Marty?’
‘Roger that,’ Sean’s voice filled his earpiece.
‘Any movement your side?’
‘Negative.’
Chet and Luke looked at each other. ‘If Ivanovic and his numpties are just hiding out here, they probably don’t know how the house works,’ Luke suggested.
Again Chet peered towards the house, then spoke into his radio. ‘We’re moving in.’
Chet’s voice rang clearly in Sean’s earpiece. Situated near the eastern wing of the house, Sean was about twenty metres from the back door, just behind a metre-high wall that marked the end of a back yard. His right knee was pressed firmly into the snow, the butt of his rifle was tight into his shoulder and the weapon was trained on the exit. Marty was in the same position, another ten metres along the wall. Fifteen metres behind them both was a line of tall spruce trees, heavy with snow. Both men had their NV goggles engaged, and the IR-filtered Maglites on their weapons lit up the area in a ghostly green haze, for them but for no one else. Not that there was anyone else. The whole place was as silent as a graveyard.
Something nagged at Sean. It was so quiet here. He knew these fuckers were in hiding, but still…
He spoke into his mike. ‘Go careful, fellas.’
‘Roger that, buddy,’ Luke’s voice came over the radio.
Sean suppressed a shiver. Chet and Luke were good, but the anxiety still gnawed at him. This op should be like shooting fish in a barrel. Marty looked over at Sean briefly before returning his gaze to the house. He couldn’t see the younger soldier’s eyes but he could sense that the kid was anxious too.
Sean thought back through the events of the past hour. He had seen Ivanovic’s man staggering out of the bar. From the white Skoda he had watched the guy weave along the pavement, pissed as a parrot. Once in the Transit van, he’d pulled carelessly out into the traffic and sped off.
Sped off.
Sean remembered the few times he’d been drunk behind the wheel, back when he was a teenager in Salisbury. He’d never driven quickly. A drunk man drives slowly, he thought. He doesn’t want to get caught..
And once they’d dumped their vehicles and approached the location on foot, the Transit van’s tracks had been perfectly straight. It was not the haphazard route of a drunk man. Not like a drunk man at all..
An icy chill clenched Sean’s stomach. It was a set-up. They had to abort. Now. He moved his hand down to his pocket, ready to activate the comms and hiss the warning into his mike.
He never got the chance.
He heard it at the same time as he saw it: a distant thud from behind, like someone knocking once on a wooden door. And the moment of impact, as a round slammed with fatal precision into the back of Marty’s neck, just below the helmet. There was a small explosion of gore, not only at the entry point but also at the exit wound at the front of the throat, and Marty’s body slumped dead.
Sean spun round. The Maglite lit up the area between him and the spruces behind, and he scanned the line of trees, desperately trying to make out the shooter. As the IR torch moved from left to right, it illuminated a face in the darkness. Sean only saw it for a fraction of a second, but he knew it well enough: the hooded eyes, the huge flat nose. The man from the bar. Only now he had a rifle, and it was pointing straight at Sean.
The SAS man’s movements were lightning fast as he swung his M16 back to where he’d seen the image, ready to take him out the moment he got the fucker in his sights.
That moment never came.
The second bullet entered just below Sean’s forehead with the same accuracy as the first, mincing the upper half of his face. He fell to the ground.
He’d had no chance to warn Chet and Luke that they were walking into an ambush.
The front door was open. Chet and Luke slipped quietly into the house.
It was as silent inside as out. They found themselves in a hallway about six metres long, with an old wooden floor, a door on either side and one at the far end. Chet pointed at the left-hand door first. Luke covered him while he tried the handle. Locked. The same went for the right-hand door. They crept towards the far door.
Chet opened it and Luke entered, scanning the place with the IR beam from his Maglite.
It was a big room. Seven or eight metres square. It smelt of neglect and there was no furniture — Luke sensed that the house had long since been abandoned — but at the far end there were two open staircases, one leading up to the first floor, the other leading into the basement. In that far wall, under the upper staircase, was a further door. Chet pointed at the door to indicate to Luke that they would clear the adjoining room before investigating the rest of the house, then stepped towards it.
Movement.
Luke swung round to his left but at first saw nothing. A couple of seconds later, though, his sight fell on a fat rat, close against the left-hand wall and looking up at them with eyes that glowed in the NV. Luke cursed silently to himself, then continued towards the door.
The adjoining room was bigger than the one with the stairs. On the left-hand wall was a large fireplace, and as Chet and Luke stepped further into the room, they saw a child’s cot standing against the far wall and a hobby horse to its right.
But no people.
Nothing.
‘FRAG!’
Chet’s voice shattered the silence. Luke saw an object, the size of a spray paint can, falling towards him.
Two metres away.
One.
It all happened so quickly. Seconds later Luke felt the full force of Chet’s bulky body smash into him, knocking him towards the edge of the room and forcing him off balance. As he fell to one side, he saw his mate try to kick the fragmentation grenade back out of the door, towards whoever had thrown it at them. It exploded just at the moment his boot touched the canister.
The explosion echoed round the room, and Luke’s reflex action was to hit the ground and clasp his hands at the back of his neck to stop the falling shrapnel from embedding itself in his flesh. He felt something shower on to his helmet, but by some miracle none of the shrapnel pierced his body.
He also heard Chet’s scream. It sounded all the louder since they had spent the last forty-five minutes in near silence.
Luke pushed himself to his knees and instinctively let a couple of rounds from his rifle fly towards the open door. Then he turned his attention to Chet.
No casualty simulation exercise could ever have prepared Luke for the state of his friend. Chet’s right leg had taken the brunt of the detonation. The grenade had burned the material of his trouser leg away, but that was not all. Flesh had been blasted away from the leg in chunks, and through the grainy haze of his NV, Luke could see splinters of bone and torn flesh. Chet’s body armour had absorbed the force of some of the blast, but the fragments had peppered his face — the skin was punctured, mangled and bleeding.
He was writhing in agony, flailing like a landed fish, and was crying out so loudly that he was already hoarse.