By way of response, Raff held up his Nalgene water bottle, which was almost empty. ‘Got me a pee bottle.’ He slipped it inside his sleeping bag. ‘You know what temperature urine comes out at? Ninety-six degrees Fahrenheit. Keep your pee bottle close – doubles as a hot-water bottle.’
Jaeger grimaced. ‘Too much detail.’
Narov shifted restlessly in her sleeping bag. ‘By staying here, we risk the shipment getting there before us. The tungsten.’
‘We do,’ Jaeger replied. ‘But one, we’re no good to anyone dead, and that storm will kill us. Two, no aircraft is landing anywhere near here in these conditions. Trust me, if the storm’s stopped us, it’ll stop any plane.’
‘Tell me,’ Alonzo ventured, ‘just how goddam cold is it?’
‘Breathe in,’ said Jaeger, by way of answer. ‘Feel your nose hairs freezing like needles? That’s what happens when you’re below minus ten. And right now I’d say it’s way colder.’
Alonzo glanced around their shelter. ‘Thank Christ for the snow cave. No need to keep watch, I guess?’
‘No one but a dead man is moving out there. Get some sleep. Everyone.’
Pausing only to remove his boots, Jaeger crawled into his own bag. He checked his watch: 0400 hours. He’d been so focused on getting them to their target – on stopping Kammler – that he’d lost all track of time.
Much longer and that focus would have killed them. Seeking shelter had been the only call to make, and Jaeger knew it.
But he also knew that time was not on their side.
55
There was nothing overly flashy or brash about Nordhavn trawler yachts. With their smooth, clean lines, they were built for serious ocean-going journeys, and for those who liked to travel the world in no-nonsense, businesslike style. They were low-key, functional and practically unsinkable, which was the main reason why Kammler had chosen to use them.
Steve Jones didn’t much give a damn. No sailor, all he cared about was whether this floating bomb platform would do the job they needed it to. The Nordhavn had a fridge full of beer and a gym, so he could handle it for a few days. But he’d be out of here just as soon as the present task was done.
He leant his massive, muscled, tattooed bulk on the rail and pressed a button on the bottom left panel of the hand-held console. On a flat stretch of deck aft, the four blades of a quadcopter drone began to rotate, spinning into a blur as they spooled up to speed.
He glanced at the figure on the bridge. ‘All clear? Nothing on the radar?’
‘Niet. Nothing. All clear.’
The Russian captain was a typically dour soul who kept himself to himself. There was one upside. He was pickled in vodka most evenings, which meant that he kept his hands off Jones’s stash of chilled beers.
Jones swept his eyes around the stretch of ocean. Calm aquamarine water stretched as far as the eye could see, empty of any other shipping. That was just as he wanted it. This far out in the Pacific, if there wasn’t another ship in range, they were as safe as houses.
He rested his thumb on the left joystick and pushed vertically forwards. The whine of the quadcopter’s engines rose to a screaming fever pitch, and seemingly effortlessly it rose into the air. Jones kept his thumb pressed forwards as the drone climbed, bringing it up to a good hundred feet above the surface of the waves.
Its cargo was visible now. Beneath the SUV-sized craft and gripped by four powerful calipers sat a black box not a great deal smaller than the drone itself. It was a life-size replica of the devices these airborne-delivery systems would be dropping over their targets, if today’s little experiment went to plan.
The black box was crammed full of bricks – enough to replicate the weight of one of the devices Professor Kangjon was building. Jones didn’t like the Korean. In fact, he didn’t like anyone foreign. Or rather, anyone who wasn’t a pure-blooded Aryan, which was how he viewed himself – a prime and perfect example of the breed.
He scrolled his thumb across the right joystick, pushing it towards the right, and sure enough the drone banked in that direction. Once he had it on the desired bearing, he flew it straight and level a good 500 feet, at which point he put it into a steep climb.
By the time it was some 800 feet away, it had clawed to over 1,000 feet in altitude – not a great deal lower than the kind of height at which the Fat Man bomb had been detonated over Nagasaki.
If Kammler’s plan was to work, they needed to deliver a clutch of INDs to their targets simultaneously, for maximum destructive effect. And they couldn’t just sail right up to the shoreline. For one, they’d be spotted by the plant’s security. And second, as Professor Kangjon had indicated, only by detonating the IND as an airburst right above the nuclear power plant could they achieve meltdown. So what better way to do so than by drone?
Jones allowed the joysticks to return to their central position and the drone went into a steady hover. Perfect.
He scanned the horizon one more time: still blissfully empty. As he turned his gaze back to the drone, he could just imagine it hovering above a power station, poised to strike. With his thumb raised over the button on the bottom of the console, he pictured the cataclysmic detonation. The resulting devastation. The human cost. The terror. He couldn’t wait, especially as it was Jaeger who would suffer the most.
Poetic justice, as Kammler had called it.
He punched his finger onto the button. There was a microsecond’s delay as the message flashed across the air, and then the sharp crack of an explosion at altitude. In a puff of brown smoke the drone and its cargo disintegrated, shattered brick and aircraft parts cascading down into the sea.
Jones smiled. They were good to go.
He pulled out a satphone from his pocket and punched speed dial.
‘The eagle has landed,’ he announced, without bothering to introduce himself.
‘And what the hell does that mean?’ the speaker on the other end snapped.
The Eagle Has Landed was one of Jones’s all-time favourite films. In it, a crack team of German operators were sent into Britain at the height of World War II to kidnap or assassinate Winston Churchill. Pity they hadn’t succeeded, Jones reflected. It would have saved him and Kammler a whole world of trouble.
‘All done and dusted,’ he explained. ‘It went like fucking clockwork.’
Kammler laughed exultantly. ‘Excellent. I knew I could count on you.’ He paused. ‘Now, your next task is one I think you will relish. Professor Kangjon: I think he may be in need of your powers of… persuasion.’
Jones smiled. ‘My fucking pleasure.’
‘Make your way back as quickly as you can.’
Jones confirmed that he would. He went below and headed for the Nordhavn’s gym. It was a bit cramped for a man of his size, but better than nothing, and at least it had a full-size punchbag slung from the ceiling.
As he began his workout, fists, knees, elbows and feet smashing away in a blur, he could see in his mind’s eye the pudgy features of the North Korean professor being beaten to a pulp. The image morphed into the chief figure of hate in Jones’s life: Will Jaeger. In his mind, he was kicking Jaeger into a cowed and bloodied heap…
The last time they had met, Jaeger had left him for dead, ensnared within a wild tangle of sharks. Well, as Jaeger should have learnt on SAS selection, Steve Jones didn’t give up that easily.
Or die that easily, for that matter.
56
Jaeger leant back from the SwiftScope’s eyepiece. Set on a tripod and screened by vegetation, the scope’s lens was camouflaged by a piece of ‘scrim’ – perforated khaki material – to prevent glare. Its 50x magnification lens gave a perfect view of all that was happening down below.