‘He won’t answer you,’ Joe said quietly.
The man looked unimpressed. He placed Conor’s passport on the counter in front of him before turning his attention to Joe’s. Opening it, he immediately found the five 100-nakfa notes Joe had slipped inside. He removed them without shame, placed them in a breast pocket of his uniform and continued examining the passport as if nothing had happened.
After thirty seconds he spoke again, his voice slow and ponderous. ‘Are you coming to Eritrea on business,’ he asked, ‘or pleasure?’
Joe looked at him, but it was not the official’s face that he saw.
He saw Caitlin, her eyes pleading in the moments before she had died.
He saw Eva and the knife twisted further. Poor Eva, who had risked everything for him and expected so little in return. He saw her sitting by him at the bandstand. Lying motionless on the beach. Staring through the fire, half her hair burned away, seconds before the flames had consumed her.
And he saw the face of a man of Middle Eastern extraction, with a hooked nose, stooped shoulders and black hair streaked with grey, responsible for the death of these two innocent women. The women that, each in a different way, Joe loved. In Joe’s imagination the Middle Eastern man was struck dumb with terror as he, Joe, held a .38 snubnose to his forehead. The weapon that would kill him just as soon as Joe had tracked him down.
Joe blinked. The customs official was waiting for a reply.
‘A bit of both,’ he said.
GLOSSARY
AQ: Al-Qaeda
ARU: armed response unit
CO: commanding officer
DEVGRU: United States Special Warfare Development Group (SEAL Team 6)
DOD: US Department of Defense
EST: Eastern Standard Time
HE: high-explosive
HEI: high-explosive incendiary
HESCO: flat-packed containers filled with dirt or sand to create a protective barrier
ICOM: intelligence communication
IED: improvised explosive device
JPC: jumpable plate carrier
klick: kilometre
L Detachment: a territorial unit attached to 22 SAS, under the command of E Squadron
LZ: landing zone
MIT: murder investigation team
MRAP: mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicle
MRE: meal, ready to eat
OC: officer commanding
PIRA: Provisional IRA
plate hanger: armoured operations (ops) vest
PTSD: post-traumatic stress disorder
REME: Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers
RTU: order to return to unit
RV: rendezvous
SOCO: scene of crime officer
SOP: standard operating procedure
SUV: sport utility vehicle
UAV: unmanned aerial vehicle
For a first glimpse of the latest Chris Ryan Extreme book, Night Strike, turn the page and jump straight into the action.
ONE
Knightsbridge, London, UK. 1738 hours.
His name was Hauser and he moved down the corridor as fast as his bad right leg allowed. The metal toolbox he carried was heavy and exaggerated his limp. He paused in front of the last door on the right. A yellow sign on the door read ‘WARNING! AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY’. He fished a key chain from his paint-flecked trousers and skimmed through the keys until he found the right one. His hand was trembling. He looked across his right shoulder at the bank of lifts ten metres back down the corridor. Satisfied the coast was clear, he inserted the key in the lock and twisted it. There was a sequence of clicks as the pins inside jangled up and down, and then a satisfying clack as the lock was released.
Hauser stepped inside the room. It was a four-metre-square jungle of filing cabinets, cardboard boxes and industrial shelves with a tall, dark-panelled window overlooking the street below. Hauser hobbled over to the window. An electric pain shot up his leg with every step, like someone had taped broken glass to his shins. He stopped in front of the window and dumped a roll of black tarpaulin he’d been carrying under his left arm. Then he set the toolbox down next to the tarp and scanned the scene outside. He was on the fourth floor of an office block adjacent to the Lanesborough Hotel at Hyde Park Corner. The current tenants were some kind of marketing agency who, he knew, were badly behind with their rent. They’d have to relocate soon. Shame. From that height Hauser had quite a view. The pavements were packed with commuters and tourists flocking in and out of Hyde Park Corner Tube station. Further in the distance lay the bleached green ribbon of the park itself.
Yep. It was quite a view. Especially if you wanted to shoot somebody.
Hauser was wearing a tearaway paper suit that had been vacuum-packed. The overalls came with a hood. He also wore a pair of surgical gloves. The suit and gloves would both prevent his DNA from contaminating the scene, as well as protecting his body from residue such as gunpowder. Now Hauser knelt down. Slowly, because any sudden movement sent fierce volts of pain up his right leg, he prised open the toolbox. It was rusty and stiff and he had to force the damn thing apart with both hands. Finally the cantilever trays separated. There were three trays on either side of the central compartment. Each one was filled with tools. Hauser ran his fingers over them. There was a rubber-headed hammer, tacks, putty, bolt cutters, a pair of suction pads, a large ring of different-sized hexagonal keys and a spirit level.
There were two more objects in the bottom of the main compartment of the toolbox. One was a diamond cutter. The other was a featureless black tube ten inches long and three and a half inches wide. Made of carbon fibre, it weighed just 300 grams, no more than a tennis racquet. Hauser removed the tube. There was a latch on the underside. Hauser flipped this and a pistol grip flipped out, transforming the tube into a short-barrelled rifle.
Hauser cocked the bolt. The whole operation had taken four seconds. Four seconds to set up a selective-fire rifle effective up to 300 metres.
Hauser set the rifle down and took the diamond cutter from the toolbox. Moving with speed now, he ran the cutter around the edges of the window until he had cut out a rectangle of glass as big as a forty-inch TV. Then he took out the suction pads and, with one in either hand, pressed them to the sides of the cut-out sheet. The glass came loose easily. Hauser laid this down on the floor with the suction pads still attached. Then he took the black tarp, hammer and tacks and pinned one end of the material to the ceiling, allowing the rest to drape down over the opening. Seen from the street below, the tarp would give the appearance of reflective glass. If anyone looked up at the window, they wouldn’t see shit.
Going down on one knee, Hauser tucked the stock tight into the Y-spot where his shoulder met his chest. His index finger rested on the trigger, then he applied a little pressure. He went through the drill he had practised thousands of times before.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
Keep the target in focus.
Firm shoulder. Left hand supporting the right.
The woman in his sights meant nothing to him. She’d simply been the first person he targeted. She was sitting on a bench and eating a sandwich. The optics were so precise that Hauser could identify the brand. Pret a Manger.
He pulled the trigger.
She was eating a sandwich one second and clutching her guts the next.
The subsonic .22 long-rifle rimfire round tore a hole in her stomach big enough to accommodate your middle finger.
And he went for the stomach with the next seven targets too. Unlike head shots, gut shots didn’t kill people, and Hauser had been specifically told not to kill. Only maim. He kicked out the rounds in quick succession. Two seconds between each. With each shot the muzzle phtt-ed and the barrel jerked.