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

  Seventieth, because that was as far as the elevator went.

  Floors seventy-one to seventy-seven were cantilevered outwards, the Al Mohajir Tower seeming to bloom like a flower at its zenith. It was designed so that the upper floors cast cooling shade over those below. Plus the interior of the flower sheltered its own massive roof garden, complete with a forest of tropical ferns.

  Those top floors, reaching out over the city, could only be accessed externally by climbing them. At first Narov had considered simply acting as though cleaning or inspecting the glass, hanging outside the window of the room where the meeting was scheduled to take place.

  But there was a problem. She needed a voice recording of the man she hunted, to be absolutely certain.

  The more she’d studied Isselhorst’s photographs – she’d transferred several from his phone to her laptop, to view them at the highest resolution possible – the more she’d become convinced that they did show the man she sought. Yet he’d changed. Subtly, but enough to ensure he wouldn’t easily be recognised.

  Narov had a good idea how he’d achieved such a clever transformation, but it made nailing him somewhat more challenging. His eyes – those killer eyes – appeared to be unaltered, but she couldn’t be absolutely certain. The secret was his voice: whatever else he might have doctored, his vocal cords would remain unchanged.

  And that meant she needed a recording.

  There was no way to secure that through several inches of toughened, soundproofed triple glazing. She needed to get inside the meeting room; or at least to insert a microphone.

  Typically, the level of security inside the Al Mohajir Tower lessened the higher you climbed. At the ground floor it was a veritable Fort Knox: there were metal detectors, detailed ID checks, scanners, security guards frisking would-be visitors, and CCTV cameras at every turn. Getting into the lifts was equally challenging.

  But by the time you hit the seventy-seventh floor, there was very little of that. The philosophy seemed to be that if you’d reached that far, then by default you must have every right to be where you were.

  Hence the present plan.

  Narov leant out from the elevator’s cage, reached up and attached the first double suction device, placing it flat on the glass, her hand gripping the tough aluminium handle that ran between the cups. Suction pads firmly applied, she flipped down the locking handles that secured the apparatus in place.

  Designed for construction workers, the suction cups allowed for teams to carry large panes of glass in relative safety – crucial when building a complex skyscraper. But in a typical piece of lateral thinking, the elite of the world’s military had realised that such devices could also enable the scaling of otherwise unassailable structures.

  Narov reached higher, attaching another double cup and testing it with her weight. Each device was designed to hold one hundred kilograms; Narov, at five foot nine, weighed just under sixty.

  She attached one more at thigh height, the handle positioned horizontally to make a foothold. Then she levered herself upwards until she had three points of contact with the glass – feet on the lower suction pad and her weight supported by the thin climbing slings that she looped through the two middle cups. She took out one last device, reached up as high as she could and fastened it in place.

  Then she carefully swung out over the abyss.

  The routine was simple: the two central cups held her weight, whilst she stood on the lower one. She then lifted herself up and forward, reached as high as she could and reattached the top cup. Shifting her weight onto that, she began to move the lower cups upwards.

  Then she repeated the process.

  It took time, and it was all about moving calmly and efficiently, letting her legs and the cups do the work. Otherwise she would tire quickly.

  In such a fashion, Narov inched her way up the first few feet of glass, being careful not to snag the bulging pack of gear she had strapped to her front for ease of access. She had a second, smaller pack strapped to her back, but she wouldn’t be needing that if all went to plan. The glass flared outwards at thirty degrees. Scaling seven floors – maybe one hundred feet – at such an angle was hugely tiring.

  But it was doable if she paced herself, scaling one massive pane at a time, clinging to it like some kind of giant spider.

  13

  As she passed the seventy-second floor, Narov could detect a faint bluish tinge to the horizon: first light was maybe an hour away. Plenty of time to get to the top. It was never truly dark in this city: the glare thrown off by the jungle of brightly lit skyscrapers ensured that she had more than enough light by which to climb.

  She’d opted to scale the building at night chiefly because of temperature. Come dawn, the heat and humidity would rise and the fierce Dubai sunlight would be reflected off the glass, making the present task near-impossible.

  At least at this hour it was still relatively cool.

  She felt her heart rate rising as she edged further and further away from the safety of the elevator cage. She ensured that she was always secured by at least three cups, yet still it was daunting hanging off the wall of glass.

  She’d first learnt this climbing technique in England, courtesy of Will Jaeger. Following their mission to stop Kammler, Jaeger had been invited to the passing-out parade of a group of Royal Marines recruits at the Commando Training Centre in Lympstone, Devon, known simply as CTCRM.

  Eighteen young men had just completed the gruelling thirty-two-week selection course, and they were scheduled to be awarded their coveted green berets.

  Jaeger, a former commando officer, had asked Narov to join him for the ceremony. He’d intended to take his wife, but at the last minute he’d realised that her behaviour was far too unpredictable these days.

  Since her rescue, Ruth Jaeger had grown increasingly introverted, spurning most of their family and friends. Jaeger had confided all this to Narov during one of their quieter moments. He hadn’t told her that Ruth was growing increasingly moody and prone to violence, but Narov knew as much from what others had said. It pained her to think of Will Jaeger being on the receiving end of so much psychological – and physical – hurt.

  With his chiselled features, longish dark hair, grey eyes and wolfish demeanour, Will Jaeger was blessed with gaunt, rugged good looks. Over time, Narov had fallen for him hook, line and sinker. She’d got skin-close. Heart-close.

  She’d longed for him. Dreamed about him. Believed in him.

  And then his wife had come back from the dead.

  Well, shit happened. Narov wasn’t one to hold grudges. She’d accepted Jaeger’s invitation to Lympstone because you never knew. For someone like her, who found it difficult to get close to anyone, hope sprang eternal. And with Will Jaeger, she sensed there was reason to hope.

  At CTCRM, she’d learnt how the Royal Marines prided themselves on recruiting the ‘thinking man’s soldier’. Their motto was: Royal Marines: It’s a state of mind. They stressed that being a commando was as much about mental as physical ability.

  ‘Be the first to understand,’ the commanding officer had urged the new recruits, ‘the first to adapt and respond; the first to overcome.’ He’d finished by reminding them that ‘In the midst of every difficulty lies opportunity.’

  Narov had been sceptical at first. She’d heard too much bullshit military-speak in her time. But then they’d taken her for a tour of the mountain cadre, where they trained some of the world’s most accomplished combat mountaineers.

  It was there that she’d watched a demonstration of how to scale a glass-fronted skyscraper using nothing more than what looked like a set of builder’s tools. Of course, when they offered her a try, she couldn’t resist. She’d been an instant convert.

  But what had impressed her most was the character of the Marines. They knew their job, they did it well, yet there was a humility to their words and actions that she hadn’t seen before in fighting men. Even with the inevitable banter, the soldiers seemed to have respect at the heart of all they did.

  Indeed, Lympstone was where the young Will Jaeger had been shaped as a soldier, and as a man.

  The words of the chief instructor ran through her head now as she scaled the highest floors of the Al Mohajir Tower: Trust the gear, it works.

  From her dizzying vantage point she could hear the distant hum of traffic, the city’s heartbeat, punctuated by the blaring of horns. She glanced east. Sunrise soon. A thin blanket of white coated much of the coast, where smog mixed with the mist sweeping in off the sea.

  Narov didn’t put much store by the climber’s mantra: Never look down. She liked looking down. She liked to see how high she had come. She knew how far she had to fall. It was a fact. So how could seeing it unsettle her?

  She didn’t understand fear of dying. She always took risks in the full knowledge of what the consequences might be. That was her way.

  She turned back to the task, shoulder muscles bunching as she detached a suction pad, reached higher and clamped it on again. Just a few more panes of glass and she’d have made it.

  Show time.

  14

  Having reached the dead end, Jaeger had turned around and decided to investigate the second tunnel. But something didn’t feel right. Absence of the normal; presence of the abnormal: the phrase had crept unbidden into his mind.

  But why? Why now? What had triggered it?

  He paused. Old habits died hard, and he’d been counting out his paces as he moved. Two hundred and fifty steps at roughly eighty centimetres per step; he was around two hundred yards in.

  But what ‘normals’ were lacking?

  What ‘abnormals’ were present that shouldn’t be?

  He flashed his torch around. Nothing jumped out at him.

  Then the answer hit him. It was the silence.

  If there was a team in this tunnel carrying out excavations, why couldn’t he hear anything? And there would be a film crew with them, making all the usual noise. He strained his ears. Nothing. You could hear the proverbial pin drop.

  This tunnel seemed even quieter than the first. Plus there was something else, something that creeped Jaeger out, his sixth sense screaming danger at him. No way was this some throwback to the past; to seventy years ago.

  This was danger now. Present, immediate, life-threatening.

  Jaeger considered his options. He had no weapons apart from his bare hands. In the pitch dark he needed his head torch to find his way, which meant that anyone out there was bound to see him coming. He could turn back, but he felt driven to continue.

  He made a decision: he’d give it another hundred yards; one hundred and ten paces. That should take him to the dead end, if this tunnel had the same configuration as the first.

  One hundred yards: no more.

  Jaeger needed out of here. He needed to see the sky and to breathe clean, fresh air. Plus he needed to make his way back to Uncle Joe, who would be wondering what had kept him.

  He pushed on for another eighty paces, creeping forward, moving silently on the balls of his feet, trying to stick to the cover of the walls. It was then that he spotted it, almost at the limit of his head torch’s reach: a shapeless bundle lying on the floor.

  He knew instantly what it was. He’d seen such things too many times before. Plus he caught the faint tang on the air: a sharp iron scent.

  Too familiar.

  Blood.

  There was a body in the tunnel, and this was no World War II-era corpse; no musty, desiccated skeleton. From what Jaeger could make out, this one was but a matter of hours old.

  He approached with infinite care. As he moved closer, he could make out a horrifying scene: other bodies, a half-dozen scattered around the floor, and lying amongst them the smashed-up remains of the tools of their trade – video cameras, tripods, sound-recording gear.

  He came to a halt. The first corpse was more or less at his feet. He swept his torch around the space. Not thirty yards away, the tunnel ended in a jumbled wall of rock and debris. This was as far as the excavations seemed to have reached.

  No immediate sign of whoever had done this.

  No movement.

  No noise.

  He switched off his torch. He waited. Utter darkness. Utter silence. The stench of death in his nostrils. There wasn’t the faintest hint of any light, apart from that thrown down by the ventilation shaft a good hundred yards to his rear.

  If the killers were here, they were doing a fine job of hiding.

  Jaeger flicked his torch back on and inspected the first corpse. A young woman, probably in her late twenties, executed with a single shot to the head. The muzzle had been so close, he could see the scorch mark around the entry wound.

  The bullet had made a tiny hole. It hardly seemed enough to kill a human, but Jaeger knew better. Whoever had done this was a true professional. They’d used .22 pistols – far smaller than your average calibre handgun.

  The .22 was fairly useless at any kind of range, but up close and personal it was a hugely efficient killer. A heavier round would tear through a human skull, leaving an exit wound. Jaeger didn’t need to check: this round hadn’t done that. It didn’t have the mass to break through.

  Instead it had bounced around inside the victim’s skull, ripping her grey matter to shreds.

  The .22 had other advantages as an assassin’s weapon. It was small and lightweight. Being a sportsman’s and huntsman’s weapon, it was readily available on the open market.

  Easy to get hold of; easy to dispose of.

  Jaeger checked the other bodies. Each had been killed in the same way. He had an image in his mind’s eye now: the victims kneeling on the floor of the tunnel as their executioner stood before them firing shot after shot.

  A terrifying way to go.

  Whoever had done this had also indulged in a frenzy of destruction, either before or after the executions, smashing the filming kit to smithereens.

  But why? To what purpose? To what end?

  It just didn’t make any sense.

  Jaeger had to presume that they’d wanted to destroy all record of whatever the film crew had recorded. But surely nothing of any great significance had been found. Just a long and very ghostly set of tunnels.

  He flicked his light back to the mound of earth at the far end. It was then that he spied it. Footprints ran up the near side. It wasn’t just one set of boots that had made that climb: scores had.

  But why, if it was a dead end?

  Jaeger moved closer. He followed the same path up the hillock of dirt. As he neared the top, he felt it. The pile beneath his feet began to shift. All of a sudden the wall of debris before him collapsed in a mini landslide.

  The noise in this enclosed space was deafening.

  He flicked off his light, and froze.

  15

  The sound of the landslide echoed along the length of the tunnel that had opened before him.

  Unlike the first tunnel, this one certainly led somewhere. But just as the film crew and their team of excavators had made their discovery, somebody – some force of gunmen – had smashed apart their film kit and executed them all.

  Jaeger figured he had his answer as to why they had been murdered: they had been snuffed out in an effort to hide whatever they had discovered. But surely someone would come to investigate? They’d find what Jaeger had found. They’d look deeper. And they’d discover whatever the film crew had stumbled across.

  Unless . . .

  He stepped back a few paces and flicked his light on again, running it back and forth over the path beaten across the pile of rubble and dirt. A lot of people had walked this way, and in both directions.

  Which begged the question: had whatever the film crew discovered been removed?

  It must have been secreted here for seventy-odd years. Presumably those who had hidden it had wanted it to remain utterly secret. So had a force of gunmen been sent in here to retrieve it and silence any who had borne witness to its existence?

  It was the only thing that made any sense.

  But what was so valuable that it could warrant seventy years’ dark secrecy and such a brutal mass slaying? A hoard of Nazi gold? Precious antiquities? Priceless artworks? What exactly was it that had cost these young people their lives?

  And then another thought hit Jaeger: what if the killers were still here? What if they were deeper in the tunnel complex, and busy with their task of retrieval?

  He ran his eye across the corpses. Eight dead. He figured there had to be several assailants; three at a minimum, and very likely more. Though he hated to admit it, they had been good at their work. Cold-blooded, efficient killers.

  And he was alone and unarmed.

  One of the basic skills of elite-forces soldiering was deciding when to fight and when to flee. In World War II, the SAS had made its name with ‘shoot-and-scoot’ tactics: striking an enemy by utter surprise, then melting away before they could respond with any significant force of arms.

  Hit and run.

  Jaeger might have the element of surprise, but he was heavily outnumbered and hopelessly outgunned. Not for the first time in his life, he decided that discretion was the better part of valour. He flicked off his torch and turned to leave, pausing for a few seconds to let his eyes adjust to the darkness. He’d move through it now, using it as his cloak and his protector.

  Jaeger set off, skirting around the corpses, but something made him pause. A memory, tugging at his adrenalin-hyped senses. For the barest of instants he was in the depths of the Brazilian Amazon, on the trail of a lost warplane – a stupendous Luftwaffe Junkers JU 390, the largest aircraft ever to have flown during World War II.