Jaeger didn’t hesitate. He vaulted onto the deck, soundless as a cat, and flitted towards the wheelhouse, moving stealthily and sticking to the darkest shadows. The door had been left ajar, and within moments, he’d slipped inside.
He found himself on the lower deck of the bridge, with Jones on the floor above. He located the stairway leading upwards, keeping his feet to the outer edges as he climbed, where there was less chance of any of the steps creaking under his weight.
He reached the top seemingly undetected. From there, he eyed the figure hunched at the wheel. The massive shoulders, the bulging muscles, the shaven head: it was Jones all right. His gaze seemed glued to the prow of the yacht, and beyond it the drone as it powered towards the target.
Jaeger scanned the bridge from end to end. Jones seemed to be alone, but propped in one corner was the distinctive form of a Type 79 folding-stock sub-machine gun – the same as Kammler’s men had used.
He would have to be doubly careful.
He stole across towards his nemesis, the Beretta levelled at the big man’s head. Still Jones didn’t seem to have heard or seen anything. Suddenly Jaeger froze, as a deafening burst of static hissed out of the Nordhavn’s speaker, set into the yacht’s bridge.
A voice came over the radio. ‘What was the detonation code again?’
Jones cursed. ‘How many bloody times… HK300445. It couldn’t be more bastard obvious.’
‘I asked for the code, not a barrage of abuse,’ the voice replied coldly, before repeating it back at Jones. ‘HK300445.’
‘You got it. Bravo, Einstein.’
‘Concentrate on keeping a steady course, if you think you can manage that.’
The radio link died and Jones cursed some more.
Jaeger felt his blood run cold. The code was obvious. HK for Hank Kammler, plus the numbers 300445, Hitler’s date of death. But it wasn’t that that had so poleaxed him. Distorted though it was over the radio link, he could have sworn that he recognised the drone operator’s voice.
It had sounded distinctly female. Horribly familiar. But most shockingly, it had sounded as if she was in control of this last-minute apocalyptic mission.
Jaeger felt a surge of rage burning through him now. What had Kammler and Jones done to her? Moving as silently as a striking snake, he stole forward, aiming the muzzle of the Beretta at the point where Jones’s bullneck met his shaven head, so keeping him covered.
When he figured he was close enough, he raised his hand and brought the butt of the pistol down in a savage ridge- hand strike, driving it into Jones’s skull. Steel met bone, the power of the blow whipping Jones’s head forwards, and the big man’s lights went out. He dropped like a stone, his forehead cracking against the Nordhavn’s wheel.
Jaeger knelt over him, using the fingers of his right hand to force Jones’s jaws open. Then he jammed the muzzle of the Beretta as deep inside the fallen man’s mouth as he could, and pulled the trigger. He’d angled the barrel upwards, ensuring the round would tear up through Jones’s brain.
Blood and mangled grey matter splattered across the Nordhavn’s floor. Jones’s mouth cavity and his skull had served as a makeshift silencer, deadening the shot, just as Jaeger had intended. He bent over the body, making sure to be totally certain. There was no doubt about it: Steve Jones’s gaze was empty, blank and stone-cold dead. Finally.
Feeling a kick of elation, Jaeger straightened up, running his eyes across the Nordhavn’s prow. A shadowy figure was crouched there, hunched over some kind of device. The drone operator – it had to be.
Jaeger darted out of the wheelhouse, moving forwards stealthily. Sure enough, the operator was bent over a console that had to be controlling the airborne delivery system, one loaded with an IND and primed to blow any second now.
As he crept closer, Jaeger realised with a massive punch to the guts that that silhouette was known to him: the cascade of long hair; the poise; the lithe form. Somehow, both Ruth and Steve Jones had survived the strike on the getaway vehicle. Maybe they’d bailed out en route, sending it and its remaining occupants onwards as a decoy? Smart. But not smart enough. Jaeger and Narov had been one step ahead of them. Now to end it, once and for all.
Jaeger levelled the Beretta, letting out a strangled yell. ‘Ruth! The boys are out there. Luke and Simon. It’s over! Call back the drone! It’s over!’
At the sound of his voice, Ruth Jaeger all but dropped the console. She turned towards him disbelievingly, shock written across her features. Jaeger saw her hands hover over the terminal, as if frozen with indecision, the drone coming to a halt maybe 150 feet short of the nuclear plant.
There was a look bordering on madness in Ruth’s tortured, harrowed eyes. Her lips moved but the words were inaudible. What the hell was she trying to say? Eventually Jaeger realised what it was: Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.
‘The boys!’ he screamed. ‘They’re out there! Call back the drone!’
Ruth’s eyes flashed wide now, the look in them one of utter hellish insanity. Somewhere in there was a burning hatred too, though a hatred of what, Jaeger just couldn’t fathom. The next moment she’d turned away from him again and set the drone powering towards its target.
Jaeger’s hands began to shake. A voice screamed inside his head: Kill her! Kill her! Kill her! Despite the night chill, sweat poured into his eyes. He tried to steady himself to take the shot, but his brain was unable to make his hands function any more.
The drone crossed into the airspace above the nuclear plant. Any second now and it would detonate. He had to take the shot.
Suddenly a figure darted out of the shadows. Lithe, powerful, untainted by emotion or mercy or love. Commando knife clasped in hand.
In one smooth movement, Irina Narov leapt at Ruth, driving the blade in deep. There was a chilling, bloodcurdling scream. Jaeger tore his gaze away from the sickening scene: two women – one that he had loved; the other that he had grown to love – fighting to the death.
The drone wobbled above the nuclear plant, hanging there like some impossible apparition. Jaeger swung the Beretta back to cover the two figures, but they were locked in mortal combat and he couldn’t risk a shot, even if he could bring himself to open fire.
As Narov fought, she drove the blade in further with one hand and wrestled the console out of her adversary’s grip. That done, she pirouetted, bringing her leg up in a savage karate kick, which drove Ruth Jaeger, stumbling, back into the shadows.
An instant later she collided with the ship’s rail, fell backwards and tumbled into the darkness.
‘How do I fly this fucking thing!’ Narov screamed. She gestured at the console. ‘I know how to fight, not to fly!’
Jaeger forced himself to move. He sprinted across the deck, whipping the console out of Narov’s grasp. As he did, the drone began to bank east, slipping into a crazed descent towards the nearest of the nuclear plant’s twin cooling towers.
He swept his eyes across the bank of joysticks, lights and dials. In his latter days in the SAS, they’d used drones extensively, mainly for remote area surveillance work in the Afghan badlands. For sure he should know how to fly this thing.
He flicked one thumb onto the left joystick, piling on the power, and with his right thumb levelled off the craft. As he did so, he realised with a kick of revulsion that the console was slick with blood.
His wife’s blood.
He blanked such thoughts from his mind. All that mattered now was to fly the damn thing. Pilot the drone west, away from the coast, and ditch it at sea.