Will thought about Roger, Laith, Mark, and Adam. “Yes, but they were badly injured by Kronos. Worse than me. They’re still recuperating. There’s no one else, apart from you, Joanna, and Robert, but I can’t involve those two because. .”
“Yeah. They definitely ain’t got the bones for it.” Alfie’s voice strengthened. “This chap, Kronos-you going to try to take him on too?”
“No. I doubt I’d win. Plus, he’s the one who’s helping us.”
Alfie glanced at Betty’s grave and the grave next to it. “Then we keep this. . private. In any case, don’t need help from other blokes. Never have.” He smiled. “Sorry, ladies, and please excuse my language: we’re about to fuck up again.”
Will looked at the grave next to Betty’s.
His mother’s grave.
What would she think if she could see him now? Would she be angry, sad, proud, all of those things? He didn’t know. She’d died at a time when he was still a carefree boy who’d never given her any cause to worry about him-he’d excelled at school, had been a committed member of its orchestra, was in those days always smiling, was sometimes awkward in adult company but no more than most teenagers, liked to cook for her, and was never spiteful to his sister. His mother hadn’t been given the chance to know how she’d fare with a more troublesome Will Cochrane.
“In forty-eight hours we need to be in Germany. I’ll get the weapons. At midday, we need to make the assault. After that,” Will said, nodding, “maybe Mum and Betty will cook us that nice meal.”
Sixty-Three
Two days later, Kronos clambered up the ever-steepening mountainside. Deep snow covered the Bavarian mountain and the rest of the Alps; the sky was clear and blue, making the surroundings visually stunning. But the German assassin had no care for the mountain range’s beauty; instead he was totally focused on reaching the place where he could observe from a distance Kurt Schreiber’s mountaintop residence.
Strapped to his back was a case containing a Barrett M82.50-caliber antimateriel sniper rifle. As a highly proficient mountaineer, Kronos could have taken a shorter route by ascending one of the range’s more severe mountain faces, but he couldn’t take the risk of making such an ascent and potentially damaging the weapon in the process. He’d therefore selected a path that for the most part enabled him to walk rather than climb. But that meant his journey was much longer. So far he’d covered twelve miles on foot. He had another mile to go.
He thought about his regular walks up one of the Black Forest’s mountains with his twin sons. They loved their outings with their father, though they frequently complained of fatigue as they neared the summit. Now that the DLB had been used, he’d choose another mountain in the forest for them to climb each week. Maybe a higher one. His boys were ready for a new challenge, and though he would never push them too hard, he would continue to ensure that they received regular, healthy exercise-even if they whined about it. He wondered what they’d be saying to him if they were by his side right now. Smiling, he pictured having to carry them in his arms until they could find a nice spot to have one of their mother’s delicious picnics.
His smile faded.
Forget what they would say to him.
What would they think if they could see him now, moving purposefully toward a place where he intended to kill many men?
To them, he was a strict but loving and fun father who did nothing more exciting than teaching history at their local school. And that was all they wanted from him. His mundane life made them feel secure and loved, and his dinnertime stories were more than enough adventure for their little minds. They wouldn’t want him to be going out and actually enacting dangerous situations similar to those presented in his tales.
They’d be horrified if they could see him now, and rightly so.
That thought made him feel terribly guilty.
For the sake of his family, he made a pledge that today would be his last adventure.
Will drove the car off the deserted track and into a forest clearing, stopped the vehicle at the base of one of the Bavarian Alps, and looked at Alfie. “This is as far as we can drive before we’re spotted on the mountain road.”
Alfie withdrew a map from the glove compartment, opened it, and studied it for the fifth time that day. “Five miles up the single-track road, route snakes like crazy so we’re gonna get a bit of cover, but elevation moves from zero to two thousand yards, so there’s gonna be a lot of times we’re exposed.”
Will pulled out a single sheet from his jacket and handed it to Alfie. “Hardly tells us anything, but for what it’s worth, that’s an aerial shot of the place.”
Alfie unfolded the paper and stared at the photo of Schreiber’s residence. “Big property, only one road in and out, fuck-off big drop on three sides of the property, so Schreiber’s got nowhere to run. You get this from NSA or GCHQ?”
Will shook his head. “Google Earth.”
“What the bleedin’ ’ell is that?”
“Never mind.” He exited the vehicle, strode to the trunk, and opened it. Alfie joined him. Both men were dressed in white ski jackets, trousers, and hiking boots-clothes that would give them some degree of concealment as well as protection from the subzero temperature. He unzipped a bag and withdrew two Heckler amp; Koch MP5 submachine guns, two USP.45 Tactical pistols and thigh holsters, and body harnesses containing spare magazines.
“Flash bangs?”
Will shook his head. “I couldn’t get any stun grenades at such short notice.”
“Shit! We ain’t gonna get anywhere near Schreiber without ’em.”
Will looked away toward the mountains. “Kronos knows that his best use to us is as a long-range sniper. He’ll be out there somewhere. With him, we stand a chance of getting close.”
“Maybe, but you’re forgetting one thing, son.”
“What?”
Alfie pointed at the aerial shot of Schreiber’s residence. “To get through the walls and still stand a chance of taking off a target’s head, he’ll be using high-velocity rounds-I reckon fifty caliber. We’ll be on our arses if one of those things even scratches us.”
“Kronos is an expert shot. He won’t miss his targets and accidentally hit us.”
Alfie strapped the holster to his thigh, inserted the pistol, donned the magazine harness over his jacket, and gripped his submachine gun. “When we’re in the building, and it all goes to rat shit, there’s every chance he’ll mistake us for two of Schreiber’s men. It’s the fact that he’s an expert shot that worries me.”
Kronos walked fast over the plateau at the mountain summit, ducked low as he neared the top of the valley, unstrapped his rifle case, went prone, and crawled forward over the snow. He rolled onto one side, opened the case, and assembled the working parts of the devastatingly powerful rifle. Extending the barrel’s bipod, he positioned the weapon so that it was facing the valley, stuck five spare ten-round magazines in the snow next to the gun, rolled back onto his stomach, gripped the rifle, and looked though its X26-XLR long-range thermal scope. Eighteen hundred yards away from him, on the other side of the two-thousand-yard-deep valley, was Schreiber’s residence. Built at the beginning of the eighteenth century, the Romanesque-style house had two towers positioned over a white asymmetrical building containing gables, numerous windows, a slate roof, and mock archery slots. The place resembled a small castle, though it had only ever been a private residence for wealthy businessmen, politicians, and artists.
Now, it was home to an evil man.
On the north, south, and west sides of the residence were sheer limestone drops that extended to the base of the undulating forested valley and its glistening lake. To the east, a single-track road snaked down a gradually descending ridge. That was the only way to reach Schreiber’s place by vehicle. But Cochrane would be crazy to approach the residence from that direction. Too exposed. Instead, he’d be making a commando assault by scaling one of the two-thousand-yard-high vertical rock faces. Kronos wondered how many men would be accompanying him. At least ten, he decided. Probably more.