Bear Grylls: The Hunt (Will Jaeger Book 3) Page 30

  Despite the mud, they piled into the vehicle.

  ‘So, does every SAS soldier get a gorgeous blonde to ride shotgun?’ asked Simon, Jaeger’s adopted son, tilting his head in Narov’s direction.

  Jaeger choked back a chuckle. ‘Sadly not. But just to be clear, she’s driving; I’m crook; and I’m former SAS. Plus you need to wind your neck in.’

  ‘Hey, I’m winding it.’

  They laughed.

  Narov got the vehicle under way and they pulled out of the school grounds, heading for the motorway.

  ‘So, guys, this is Irina,’ Jaeger announced, realising he’d failed to do the introductions. ‘She offered to help me get you home, so be real nice to her.’ He paused. ‘She can be very scary when she wants to be.’

  The boys looked at each other.

  ‘Like we’re ever not nice.’

  ‘Yeah, as if.’

  ‘You know why we lost the match?’ Luke volunteered. He lived, ate and breathed rugby, and like his dad he was one bad loser. ‘We got greedy in the second half. We thought we’d won. We took stupid risks and paid the price.’

  ‘Just like your father tends to,’ Narov volunteered flatly.

  Jaeger rolled his eyes.

  Luke glanced at his dad, his face all serious for a second. ‘I miss Mum.’

  ‘I know. We all miss her.’ In a way, Jaeger did.

  After Brooks had contacted the Chinese authorities, they had descended on Kammler’s lair in force. They’d flown the wounded out to the nearest hospital, which had been equipped with the most advanced medical facilities. That had been critical to Jaeger and Miles’s recoveries.

  It was in hospital that Jaeger had learnt all that had been discovered about his errant wife. The remains of Ruth’s laptop had been retrieved from the scorched wreckage of Kammler’s lair. That, plus her emails, had revealed the full extent to which she had been seduced by Kammler’s crazed schemes.

  In his own gentle way Miles had explained to Jaeger that Ruth’s warped allegiances had been more anchored in trauma than in any coherent beliefs or philosophy. She’d demonstrated all the classic symptoms of Stockholm syndrome.

  Stockholm syndrome was something studied during the kidnap and ransom phase of SAS counter-terrorism training. Jaeger remembered it well. It was named after a Stockholm bank heist in which the hostages had ended up siding with the robbers. It referred to the propensity of a hostage to bond with his or her captor, especially if they shared similar values and views.

  Jaeger had forced himself to contemplate this with regard to his wife. It would explain an awful lot of her behaviour over the past few months, though forgiving her would still take time. Serious amounts of time. As for the love, it was there, but warped forever by grief and anger.

  Several bodies had been discovered in the getaway vehicle, one of which was that of a woman. The Chinese authorities had promised DNA samples to confirm that Ruth Jaeger and Steve Jones were amongst the dead, but they were taking their time.

  It was hardly surprising. Brooks and the CIA had hardly rushed to alert them when Kammler was plotting world devastation from Chinese soil. Why would they hurry now to share their findings?

  Even so, Jaeger had few doubts that his wife had perished in that vehicle. Still, until he had absolute confirmation, he wasn’t going to say anything to the boys. They had more than enough to deal with.

  ‘Any news?’ Luke pressed. ‘Anything?’

  Jaeger shook his head. ‘Nothing concrete. But let’s not lose hope. Let’s not give up.’

  He felt like a Judas saying it, even though he was just trying to shield them from the worst. He glanced at Narov. She looked just like she had when he’d first met her. Cold. Detached. Unemotional.

  Only of course deep down she wasn’t. Jaeger knew that. In a way, that was what he loved about her. Her impenetrable calm. Her blunt honesty. Her straight-talking no-bullshit ways.

  Her quiet, unassailable strength.

  He figured it was time to lighten the mood a little. He’d try some corny jokes. Another long-lived Jaeger family tradition: on long drives, Dad cracks the worst ever jokes.

  He turned to the boys. ‘So . . . why don’t they play poker in the jungle?’

  Luke rolled his eyes and groaned. ‘Don’t tell us – too many cheetahs.’

  Jaeger grinned. ‘Very good. How about this. What’s a Hindu?’

  Luke groaned again. ‘Lay eggs. Ha ha. Very funny.’ He nudged Simon in the ribs. ‘I guess everything’s gotta be okay if Dad’s started on the crappy jokes.’

  Simon grinned. ‘Talking of Hindus, we’re learning all about it at school. It’s kinda cool.’ He put on a deep, gruff, God-like voice. ‘Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds! Lord Krishna, the blue-faced dude.’

  The colour drained from Narov’s face and she snapped her head around. ‘What did you say? Now I have become what?’

  Simon shrugged. ‘Death, destroyer of worlds. That’s how the quote goes. Like I said, Lord Krishna.’

  ‘Yeah, but some guy called Oppenheimer also used it,’ Luke added. ‘When the Americans detonated the first atom bomb. We learnt about it in history. Kind of summed up the moment pretty well, too.’

  Narov flicked her eyes across to Jaeger. There was a hint of panic in them that he was at a total loss to comprehend. ‘There’s a services just ahead. I’m pulling over.’

  She turned in and brought the Range Rover to a halt. As she did so, Jaeger could sense the fear that had crept into the vehicle.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he queried.

  Narov eyed him nervously. Worriedly. It was hugely unsettling. If she was so perturbed, then whatever was happening had to be some seriously heavy shit.

  ‘I . . . terminated Kammler. That much you must have realised.’ She was trying to choose her words carefully, mindful of the boys sitting in the rear. ‘But you know what the weirdest thing was? He died almost triumphantly.’

  She locked eyes with Jaeger. ‘His last words were choked off mid sentence. But you know what they were: Now I am become death . . . I didn’t get the significance of it at the time.’ A beat. ‘I do now.’

  Jaeger felt his blood run cold. The pieces were falling together in his mind, and it was utterly chilling. ‘Are you saying what I think you’re saying?’ he ventured.

  ‘We’ve been fooled.’ Narov answered, as if confirming his worst thoughts. ‘Kammler tricked us all, even those supposedly closest to him.’ She shook her head, horrified. ‘There weren’t just eight devices. There’s another out there somewhere.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Jaeger muttered. ‘Nine. And the last one presumably primed to blow.’

  Narov nodded darkly. ‘Plus there’s this: Kammler’s final message, it was personal. He said: Tell Jaeger.’

  93

  Jaeger’s eyes widened. He was gripped by an unshakeable fear. A phrase had come unbidden into his head, from the time of his bloody fight with Steve Jones in Kammler’s lair. It had slipped from his mind during the long hours of unconsciousness that had followed. But it was back now with a vengeance, triggered by Narov’s recollections.

  He turned to the boys, doing his best to hide his consternation. He thrust his debit card in their direction. ‘Here, you know the code. You guys must be starving. We’ll see you in McDonald’s in five.’

  The only answer was a pair of doors slamming and the boys were gone.

  Jaeger turned back to Narov. ‘Before I shot him, Steve Jones said something. Something like: I’m gonna keep you alive so you can watch your family fry. It’s only just come back to me.’

  Narov’s gaze hardened. ‘So it is personal. For both of them. Against you and your loved ones. If there is a device still out there, it is being targeted at you and them.’

  ‘But how? And where?’

  Narov pointed towards the pair of golden arches that rose above the service area. ‘The boys. Has to be. Kammler tortured you with Ruth and Luke before, remember. This time, Ruth ran to Kammler. To his side. That leaves only the boys.’

  Jaeger glanced towards the darkening horizon, in the direction of the coast. The school rugby match had ended late. It was dusk. Darkness descending. In the distance, a pair of floodlit towers rose above the clifftop, surrounded by a weird, ghostly halo of alien blue light.

  It hit him suddenly, in a blinding flash of realisation. ‘The reactor at Hinkley Point,’ he whispered. ‘Has to be.’

  A forty-kilo IND detonated at Hinkley – it would cause meltdown at the plant. Cataclysmic devastation. It would fit Kammler’s bill perfectly . . . and the boys’ school just nearby would be one of the first places to be hit. Might even be close enough to be flattened by the blast.

  He turned to Narov. ‘Hinkley’s smack-bang beside their school. Plus it’s coastal, so perfect for his fleet of yachts. The prevailing wind spreading radioactive fallout all across the country. Bristol, Reading, Oxford, London . . . all those cities in its path. And from there on into western Europe, like so many Chernobyls . . .’

  His mind was awakening to the full ramifications; the full horror. ‘We’ve been outsmarted. Completely. It was always nine. How could we have been so dumb? How could we have missed it?’

  Narov shrugged. ‘Shit happens. And we’re not perfect.’

  ‘The ninth device – it’s his last laugh on us all. His gift to a devastated world.’

  ‘Not if we can stop him.’ Narov’s voice was tight with tension. ‘Hinkley’s what, twenty minutes’ drive away?’

  ‘Less. Fifteen.’

  She slammed a fist into the Range Rover’s wheel. ‘Then what are we waiting for? But what about the boys?’

  Jaeger glanced towards the twin towers. ‘We do not take them any closer to the threat. They sit tight here. I’ll call someone who can fetch them.’

  He checked the time and date on his watch. Jennie. Raff’s girlfriend normally worked nights, but she had the long weekend off. Raff was planning to take her away on a surprise break. He grabbed his mobile. He’d give her a call.

  He went to throw open the Range Rover’s door, but paused for an instant. The date. Utterly chilling. He didn’t believe in coincidences.

  ‘You know what date it is? The thirtieth of April. Anniversary of Hitler’s death. It’s pre-planned. Got to be.’

  ‘Only one way to find out.’ Narov fixed him with a look. ‘We have to get moving. Go tell the boys.’

  ‘Weaponry? Whoever’s crewing that boat, what the fuck do we have to fight them with? Our bare hands?’

  Narov reached behind her back and withdrew a compact pistol. Her Beretta 92FS. Jaeger didn’t know how she’d managed to keep hold of it, but he wasn’t entirely surprised.

  ‘Never go anywhere without it,’ she breathed. ‘Go warn the boys.’

  ‘Make some calls and get a chopper scrambled from Valhalla,’ Jaeger called over his shoulder as he darted from the vehicle. ‘They should be able to get here pronto.’

  Valhalla: their slang for Hereford, the SAS’s base, lying just north of the Bristol Channel. It made sense to call for as much backup as possible.

  ‘We will be there sooner,’ Narov yelled after him.

  94

  It was the noise that had alerted them. The weird, ghostly roar of a machine of some sort rising fast into the night sky. Only no aircraft that Jaeger and Narov had ever heard of took off directly from the sea, and especially not under such conditions.

  Whatever the mystery machine might be, it remained utterly shrouded in darkness, almost invisible to the naked eye. The only exception was the rear underside, from where Jaeger could make out a faint, pulsing red glow.

  That blinking devil’s eye was the only sign that the hidden aircraft was powering into the heavens.

  Jaeger turned his head ninety degrees, so that he was facing east towards the shadowed outline of the Somerset coastline. Not a mile away, the ghostly structure of the nuclear power plant was lit up like some kind of giant spacecraft marooned on the low cliffs.

  The proximity of the two – the power station and the approaching aircraft – was terrifying.

  Narov crouched in the stern of the boat, edging it forward, trying to match their desire for speed with the need to make a covert approach. In the circumstances, stealing the rigid inflatable boat had been their only option. There had been several craft moored in Bridgwater Bay, but the RIB had been the one to go for.

  Fast, stable, relatively silent and riding low in the water, it was the preferred assault craft for seaborne special forces the world over. It had made double the sense to take the RIB, for there was a stiff wind blowing and a big swell on the sea. The RIB was just about unsinkable and able to master far worse conditions than these.

  Once they had got under way, powering out to sea, Narov hadn’t even tried to argue when Jaeger had demanded her pistol. Whoever was on the vessel that had to be out there somewhere on the dark waters, Jaeger was determined to be the one to take them down.

  As Narov nursed the RIB closer to where the launch platform had to lie, a form began to emerge from the dark line where the night sky met the sea. Jaeger could just make out the vessel, silhouetted as it was by the moonlight that bled through the clouds.

  It had the classic lines of a Nordhavn yacht, Kammler’s chosen delivery vessel for the untold mass murder and mayhem that he had planned to visit on the world.

  As the ship materialised from the darkness, Narov powered the RIB right down so they could creep up on their prey silent and unseen. The RIB inched closer, Jaeger holding his breath and praying that the roar of the mystery aircraft would mask the noise of their engine.

  Whoever was crewing the yacht was bound to be far better armed than Jaeger and Narov, who boasted the one Beretta between them. If the crew got wise to the RIB’s presence, they’d be able to lean over the ship’s rail and shoot them up in the water. They’d pick off Jaeger and Narov at a distance, well before the Nordhavn came within the pistol’s range.

  Much as Jaeger hated it, they had to creep in stealthily, even as the aircraft streaked towards its target, the devil’s eye blinking ever closer to the cliffs.

  Jaeger didn’t doubt that the airborne platform was somehow fitted with the last of Kammler’s INDs. The ninth device – the one they had all missed, believing that Kammler, in his hubris and megalomania, would have stuck rigidly to the Nazis’ sacred number.

  He figured the mystery platform had to be a drone of sorts. Right now, it was just minutes away from drawing level with the power station and stealing into its airspace. That was what the flashing red light had to be for – it provided a reference point, so the drone’s operator could steer it through the dark skies to the exact point of detonation, one calculated to cause maximum devastation and the catastrophic meltdown of the power plant.

  The RIB nudged ever closer to the Nordhavn. Moments later, the silhouette of the yacht was looming above them, a dark, slab-sided form etched against the moonlit sky. Jaeger reached out one arm to fend off the vessel. The last thing they needed was to collide with its hull, alerting whoever was aboard.

  That done, he began to drag them hand-over-hand towards the ladder lashed to the Nordhavn’s side, guiding the prow of the RIB through the choppy water. His eyes scanned the deck above, checking for any movement or a sign they had been discovered.

  Nothing.

  Momentarily he clocked the vessel’s name bolted to the hull: Grey Wolf. Kammler’s chosen code name. Like the man had said with his dying breath, this one was personal. A gift from Kammler to Will Jaeger – the deaths of his nearest and dearest. Or so Kammler had intended.

  Well it’s personal for the both of us, Jaeger told himself grimly.

  With his left hand he made a grab for the ladder, and without a word to Narov swung himself onto the rungs. Hand over hand he powered upwards, light on his feet despite his recent injuries and blanking out any residual pain.

  With infinite care he inched his head above the level of the hull, his eyes sweeping the Nordhavn’s deck. A massive figure was standing erect in the dimly lit wheelhouse. Or rather, his bulk seemed to be propped against one side of it, as if he needed the support to remain upright.

  Steve Jones, it had to be. Somehow he’d escaped from the getaway vehicle, that’s if he’d still been riding in it when Brooks had taken it out. And by the looks of things, he was still nursing the injuries Jaeger had inflicted upon him during their brutal fight in Kammler’s lair.

  But if Jones was here, did that also mean . . .?

  95

  Away to their east, the pulsing red light of the drone was fast approaching the airspace above the nuclear plant. No matter who might be crewing this ship of death, they had to be stopped. No time to lose.

  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.