Bear Grylls: The Hunt (Will Jaeger Book 3) Read online

  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.

  Jaeger’s backside felt like a block of ice. His legs were on fire, his muscles on the verge of cramping up. He needed to shift about a bit in this freezing hole of an OP – little more than a shell scrape on the bare mountainside – or he was at risk of getting frostbite. But any sudden movement had to be avoided.

  It was forty-eight hours since the blizzard had blown itself out. For four days they’d been trapped in that snow cave, riding out its blind rage. Four agonising days that had confirmed what Jaeger had felt on every mission he had ever been involved in: it was the waiting that was the hardest part.

  It was six days since they’d leapt from the Antonov’s open ramp and landed on Chinese soil. Or snow. Time was running out, and still there was no sign of the tungsten shipment.

  They’d dug themselves out of the snow cave only to discover that their surroundings had been transformed. Ghostly snow sculptures rose before them, as if a horde of primordial monsters had stormed down from the mountains, becoming frozen in time. In between those bizarre forms, pans of ice were wind-blasted and scoured clear.

  The landscape had had a certain dreamlike quality to it. Everything was snow. Even the poles marking the pulk’s position had been transformed. Raff had had to knock the snow off them before they could credit that the pulk was actually there – just buried.

  Thankfully, the weather had turned. In fact, it had reverted to what were more normal conditions for this time of year – spring on the high Tibetan plateau. Under a shockingly clear night sky – washed free of the storm – they’d harnessed up the sled and set forth.

  A few uneventful hours later, they’d reached their end destination and established the OP. Roofed over with branches and chicken wire – into which they’d woven twigs and vegetation, piling on some earth and snow for extra authenticity – it was indistinguishable from the surrounding terrain.

  You would have to stand right on top of it and gaze into the six inches or so separating the roof from the frontal slope of rocks and boulders to get any sense of what it was. And as the interior was bathed in permanent shadow, the watchers were all but invisible.

  A few dozen paces back from the OP, at the crest of the ridge, the snow proper began. There they’d built a second, slightly larger snow cave, the entrance to which was concealed by Alpine camouflage netting. This was the rest and admin area.

  They’d put in place a perfectly concealed position to spy on their target.

  Now to nail him.

  But they were running short on food. As was invariably the case when calculating rations, Jaeger had underestimated just how many calories the human body needed to stave off starvation and as fuel to keep warm. Or rather, in the trade-off between extra food and extra weaponry, it was weaponry that had won.

  As Raff had noted sourly, shame you couldn’t eat bullets.

  Jaeger could feel hunger gnawing at his guts. But one glance at the facility below them – the target – and he figured prioritising raw firepower over raw food was undoubtedly a good thing.

  That facility was a well-secured natural fortress, and it would require a distinctly suicidal four-person squad to take it out.

  They’d set the OP on the very fringes of the snowline, where the frozen whiteness petered out, to be replaced by bare rock and scrub. Below, a steep-sided gorge cut through the foothills of the Nyenchen Tanglha Mountains, and at the far end lay the vast expanse of the Namtso – ‘Beautiful’ – Lake.

  Through the depths of the gorge ran the Boqi river, a twisting sliver of violent aquamarine blue, the striking colour caused by the salts carried by glacial meltwaters. And clinging to the side of the gorge, on a platform blasted out of the rock, lay the fortress that Jaeger and his team were keeping watch on.

  It was the water that had drawn Kammler here, which had also been the means via which the Chinese government had allowed him in. Much of Tibet’s water sat in lakes like the Namtso, which, being brackish, carried a high degree of salt. Salt water was no good for human consumption, and offered little scope for irrigation either, since the salt quickly poisoned the land.

  Knowing this, and recognising the growing demand for water amongst a one-billion-strong population, the Chinese had opened up to foreign investment in using water for energy and for its purification. In due course Kammler had offered them a double whammy of a promise, here on the banks of the Boqi.

  First, by piping the water from the smaller, glacial lakes above, his plant could turn it into electricity – hence the giant turbine hall set into the mountainside. Three massive water pipelines – ‘penstocks’ to those in the trade – brought the water from the highland lakes down the nearside of the gorge to drive the turbines situated inside the building.

  The electricity so generated – massive amounts of the stuff – went to serve the plant’s main purpose: desalination. Removing salt from brackish water to make it drinkable was hideously expensive. Normally. But here, the electricity came dirt cheap, and Kammler had promised groundbreaking technologies to render the water potable.

  For the Chinese, this was the holy grail of such research. No wonder they had welcomed Kammler – plus his money and technology – with open arms.

  China had recently overtaken America as the foremost country attracting foreign investors. Kammler had been just one amongst many thousands of such businessmen.

  All of this Jaeger had learnt from Miles’s briefings. Now, as he gazed down into the Boqi river gorge, he was seeing it at first hand. The slab-sided desalination plant lay adjacent to the turbine house, and a short distance away was the accommodation block. It looked as if it must house a good two hundred people – workers and guards.

  Tucked well to one side and clinging to the cover of the gorge’s knife-cut wall was their main target – the laboratory. The entire complex was encircled by a double layer of high-tensile fencing, crowned by rolls of razor wire. A guard force patrolled the perimeter. They were armed with pistols, as was a civilian establishment’s wont, but Jaeger didn’t doubt that there was a well-stocked armoury close at hand.

  It was a heavy security presence for a civilian facility, but no more than many others that Jaeger had visited. Commercial research was expensive and sensitive, and espionage always a danger. Kammler would have argued that he had to safeguard his investment, which would supposedly chiefly benefit China after all.

  He had every reason to seek to import sophisticated technology for his desalination plant and laboratory. A dirt track snaked east along the riverside, giving access to the outside world: it was via this route that Kammler would be awaiting his newest, Moldovan delivery.

  Somewhere in the laboratory was a sealed-off high-security area, with very restricted access. There, pretty much hiding in plain sight, he was amassing his highly enriched uranium.

  And, as they feared, building his clutch of deadly INDs.

  57

  Of course, a place as beautiful as Namtso Lake attracted a smattering of tourists. Snowy peaks plunged abruptly into the turquoise waters, wind-sculpted ice crusting the very shoreline. And along the northern fringes, herds of sheep grazed upon the seasonal grasses that thrived amidst the yellows, ochres and greys of the lakeside.

  But the lake’s sheer remoteness kept the number of visitors down to a trickle, and few ever ventured to the far western fringes – into the Boqi gorge. Even if they did, all they would see would be a bona fide hydropower station, with all the usual associated facilities, security included.

  Miles and Brooks had hit the nail on the head: this place was perfect for Kammler’s purposes. In fact, the entire set-up was so smart and accomplished that it made Jaeger marvel at the sheer waste of such intellect. So much creative intelligence and cunning channelled into death and mass destruction.

  What would a man like Kammler have been capable of, had he not been seduced by his father’s twisted dreams of Nazi world domination? Of the rise of a Fourth Reich?

  It troubled Jaeger beyond reason that Ruth might be down there. It was such a horrific thought that he blanked it from his mind. If he dwelt upon it, it would torture and destroy him.

  He leant back from the SwiftScope and wriggled around, trying to work some life back into frozen limbs. Without a word being said, Raff took up position at the scope. What they were waiting on now was the arrival of the tungsten shipment – their Trojan horse.

  Jaeger eyed the big Maori for a second. With approaching six days’ growth of beard, and trussed up in layer upon layer of cold-weather gear, the guy looked like some kind of a cave troll. It never ceased to amaze Jaeger how much punishment Raff seemed able to take without complaining. The exception was the cold.

  Raff truly hated the cold. It made him grumpy; bad company, just like he was now.

  ‘Got an idea,’ Jaeger ventured quietly. ‘Want to hear it?’

  ‘Just as long as it doesn’t involve jumping into bloody snowdrifts,’ Raff muttered, without removing his eye from the scope.

  ‘Remember the heavy-water raid? 1942? We studied it in commando training. Started with Operation Musketoon, twelve commandos dropped by submarine off Norway’s coast. They trekked across the mountains to sabotage a hydropower plant – Glomfjord. Pretty similar to this one.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Raff grunted. ‘Commando legend. Sunk Hitler’s nuclear programme. And?’

  ‘They were a small force,’ Jaeger continued. ‘Lightly armed. Nowhere near strong enough to take down the two hundred German troops defending the place. So you know what they did? They harnessed the power of mother nature to smash it to smithereens.’

  ‘Don’t drag it out. I got brain freeze.’

  ‘They realised the pipelines were pointed directly at the power plant, like the barrels of a massive shotgun. You blow the pipes, the water spews out and slams into the target, carrying with it trees, rocks, boulders – the works.’

  Raff took his eye away from the scope. Jaeger could tell that he had the big Maori’s attention now.

  ‘Think about it,’ he enthused. ‘We blow the pipelines, high above the plant, security fencing gets swept away, walls get breached; it’s chaos. Gives us an edge, a way in.’

  The hint of a smile crept across Raff’s frozen features. ‘Does this mean I get to go home early and get warm?’

  Jaeger grinned. ‘Pretty much. But you’re the demolitions guy. How do we do it? Do we have enough explosives?’

  ‘Damn right we do,’ Raff growled. ‘Wrap a collar of shaped PE4 around each of the pipelines, preferably at a point of natural weakness. Job sorted.’

  ‘So,’ Jaeger mused, ‘we blow the tungsten bomb, lab gets obliterated. We blow the pipeline charges, perimeter fence and a lot else gets smashed to pieces. That’s our way in – we go in hard on the tail end of that.’

  Raff’s smile glinted in the half-light of the OP. ‘What’s not to like?’

  Quite a bit actually, thought Jaeger, though he wasn’t about to vocalise it. As far as the rest were concerned, they were risking their lives. But in Jaeger’s case there was also the possibility that his wife was down there. And when they blew the pipelines, would anyone in that plant survive the coming storm?

  What was Jaeger then supposed to tell his son? I killed your mother, but I had my reasons. The survival of the world was at stake.

  He blanked the very thought from his head. No son would ever understand.

  But what other option was there?

  58

  Raff and Alonzo had volunteered to set the pipeline charges. Demolitions: it was their kind of thing.

  They waited until nightfall before flitting due west, moving along the snowline until they reached the point just below where the pipelines exited the feeder lake. They crouched beside the massive steel tubes, each as high as a man’s shoulders, the roar of the water loud in their ears.

  The sheer power of the through-flow and resulting friction was such that it heated up the steel sides of the pipelines, which were utterly free of snow and ice. The bare pipes plunged away like giant serpents glistening in the moonlight.

  Raff and Alonzo descended a short distance, tracing the route of the pipes to where they tilted over the lip of the gorge, dropping at a seventy-degree angle towards the plant. There they unslung their rucksacks and settled to their task. At this juncture the pipes, when blown asunder, would be pointing directly at the power station some five hundred feet below, like three giant gun barrels.

  From their packs they removed the shaped daisy-chain charges. Each consisted of a string of chunks of NATO Plastic Explosive No. 4 – ‘PE4’ for short – the saboteur’s tool of choice. Clay-coloured, and with a distinctive oily smell, it had a consistency like dough.

  It could be sliced up, moulded, jumped on and even shot at, and it wouldn’t so much as go phut. But if you triggered a small charge embedded within it – the detonator – it would truly go kaboom.

  Raff threaded the first charge around the nearest pipe. He could feel the thrumming pressure as water thundered through at incredible speed. He did a repeat performance with the other two pipes, linking the three charges to one common fuse.

  That fuse was set to sixty seconds, leaving just enough time for whoever triggered it to take cover. With an explosive velocity of some 7,500 metres per second, a charge of PE4 would scythe down anything in its path. Once they triggered the detonator, the pipelines would be history.

  Charges set, Raff rejoined Alonzo on watch. The night was clear and still and not another living thing appeared to be moving, either on the snowfields above or below in the gorge.

  ‘Anything?’ Raff whispered.

  ‘Nada,’ Alonzo replied through a mouthful of gum.

  In his arms the big American cradled a Colt C7 Diemaco assault rifle, with an under-slung 40mm grenade launcher. In terms of lightness, sheer accuracy and raw firepower, the assault rifle/grenade launcher combo was the only choice for such a mission. All had opted for it bar Narov.

  Typically, she had insisted on deploying with her trusty Dragunov sniper rifle.

  ‘I could murder a beer,’ Alonzo muttered.

  Raff blew into his gloved hands. ‘Beer? Too fucking cold, mate. Give me a Big Mac and hot chocolate any time.’

  He took a moment to check over his handiwork. As he ran his eye across the linked charges, he could just imagine the tidal wave of destruction that would tear down the mountainside once the pipelines were ruptured.

  He hoped to hell Jaeger’s wife wasn’t down there. In truth, he doubted she was. As far as Raff was concerned, Ruth had very likely taken herself off to some wacky retreat. A few weeks away and a chance to sort her head. That was far more likely than her running here, to Kammler.

  But still, he didn’t envy his friend’s dilemma one bit.

  Sure, there had been no sign of Ruth during their observations. They’d considered attempting a close-target recce to check. But on balance, the risk of compromise was too high, and no way could they afford to mess up. Not for anyone.

  Raff and Alonzo turned to their final task: camouflaging the charges. Stunted trees and shrubs clung to the side of the gorge. They scattered some fallen branches over their handiwork until it was well hidden, then set off back to the OP.

  It had just turned midnight on their third day above Kammler’s lair. They expected the tungsten bomb – their Trojan horse – to be delivered shortly. Brooks was keeping a close check on it via the tracking device, and it was scheduled to be here in the next twenty-four hours.

  Raff and Alonzo were back at the OP by 0300, Chinese time. It would be 1900 hours back in Germany – at Falkenhagen – and Miles had assured the team that he was on call 24/7. Time for the update that they were all were keen to hear.

  Raff relieved Narov at the OP. She moved back to the rest area to try and get some sleep, Alonzo joining her. For the past forty-eight hours they’d been on half rations, and the hunger and cold were gnawing at their guts.

  Raff glanced at Jaeger, who was hunched over the scope. ‘Anything, mate?’

  Jaeger held up a hand for silence. His focus was one hundred per cent on whatever he could see through the lens. Raff strained his ears. He figured he could make out the distant throb of a diesel engine in the valley below.

  The SwiftScope they were using was a High Performance Nighthawk, equipped with an 82mm objective lens, providing increased light transmission. Basically, it delivered incredible night vision in anything close to decent moonlight.

  Artificially boosted night-vision binoculars – NVGs – which utilised infrared light spectrums to see in the dark, were all well and good, but they tended to create their own distinctive glow. Not good when holed up in an OP overlooking a hostile target.

  ‘Got something,’ Jaeger muttered. ‘Twelve X-rays, all armed: assault rifles. Boarding two SUVs. Loading in bags of gear. Looks like Kammler’s people are taking a little expedition somewhere.’

  ‘Tesco,’ Raff grunted. ‘Running short on cornflakes.’

  Jaeger smiled. ‘Nah, mate. Chinese takeaway.’

  Humour: the bedrock of British elite forces operations.

  If that died, you might as well pack up and head home.

  59

  ‘First vehicle leading off,’ Jaeger continued his commentary. ‘Heading east down the dirt track. Two up, travelling in convoy.’ He kept his eye glued to the scope as he swung it gently right, tracing the vehicles’ passage. ‘Showing full lights, not driving tactically, skis strapped to the roof: looks like a regular kind of a road move.

  ‘Gone from view,’ he added. He removed his eye from the scope. ‘What d’you reckon, mate?’