Which was how Wexley came to be in command of this unit: a Special Ops team belonging to one of the world’s pre-eminent mercenary organisations—the highly corporate, South African-based ‘Executive Solutions’ or ‘ExSol’.
While ExSol specialised in Third World security missions—like propping up African dictatorships in exchange for diamond-mining royalties—it also, when the logistics allowed, engaged in the more lucrative international bounty hunts that occasionally arose.
At nearly $19 million per head, this was the most lucrative bounty hunt ever, and thanks to a well-placed friend on the Council, Executive Solutions had been given the inside running to claim three of those heads.
Wexley’s radio operator came up beside him. ‘Sir. Blue Team has engaged the Marines in the office tower.’
Wexley nodded. ‘Tell them to return to the dry-dock via the bridge when they’re done.’
‘Sir, there’s another thing,’ the radio man said.
‘Yes?’
‘Neidricht up on the roof says he’s picked up two incoming signals on the external radar.’ There was a pause. ‘Judging by the signatures, he thinks it’s the Hungarian and the Black Knight.’
‘How far out are they?’
‘The Hungarian’s about fifteen minutes away. The Knight is further, maybe twenty-five.’
Wexley bit his lip.
Bounty hunters, he thought. Fucking bounty hunters.
Wexley hated bounty hunt missions precisely because he hated bounty hunters. If they didn’t beat you to the target, the little fuckers would let you do all the dirty work, stalk you all the way back to the proof-station, steal the target out from under you and then claim the money for themselves.
In an up-front military exchange, the winner was the last man standing. Not so in a bounty hunt. In a bounty hunt, the winner was the one who presented the prize back at base—however he might have obtained it.
Wexley growled. ‘The Hungarian I can handle, he’s a brute. But the Black Knight . . . he’ll almost certainly be a problem.’
The ExSol commander looked down at the submarine pit. ‘Which means we’d better make this quick. Get this Schofield asshole, and bring me his fucking head.’
Schofield, Book II and Clark dropped down the wall of the dry-dock pit.
They fell for a full thirty feet, before—whump—they landed heavily on the two Delta bodies slumped at the bottom.
‘Come on, move! Move! Move!’ Schofield pulled the other two underneath the big black Typhoon sub, mounted on its blocks in the pit.
Each block was about the size of a small car and made of solid concrete. Four long rows of the blocks supported the massive submarine, creating a series of narrow right-angled alleyways underneath the Typhoon’s black steel hull.
Schofield spoke into his throat-mike as he zig-zagged through the dark alleyways: ‘Bull! Bull Simcox! Do you copy!’
Bull’s voice, fast and desperate: ‘Scarecrow, shit! We’re under heavy fire over here! All of the others are down and I’m . . . I’m hit bad! I can’t—oh, fuck—no!—’
There was a brief crack of gunfire at the other end and then the signal cut to hash.
‘Shit,’ Schofield said.
Then, abruptly, there came several soft whumps from somewhere behind him.
He spun—MP-7 up—and through the forest of fat concrete blocks, saw the first set of enemy troops drop into the pit on ropes.
With Book II and Clark behind him, Schofield weaved his way through the shadowy alleyways under the Typhoon, ducking enemy fire.
Their pursuers had now entered the dark concrete maze as well—maybe ten men in total—and they were systematically moving forward, covering the long alleyways with heavy fire, herding Schofield and his men toward the sea-gate-end of the dry-dock.
Schofield watched his enemies as they moved, analysed their tactics, eyed their weapons. Their tactics were standard. Basic flushing stuff. But their weapons . . .
Their weapons.
‘Who are these guys?’ Book II said.
Schofield said, ‘I have an idea, but you’re not going to like it.’
‘Try me.’
‘Check out their guns.’
Book II took a quick look. Some of the white-masked men held MP-5s while others carried French-made FAMAS assault rifles or American Colt Commandos. Others still held old AK-47s, or AK-47 variants like the Chinese Type 56.
‘See the guns?’ Schofield said as they moved. ‘They’ve all got different kinds of weapons.’
‘Damn it,’ Book II said. ‘Mercenaries.’
‘That’s what I’m thinking.’
‘But why?’
‘Don’t know. At least not yet.’
‘What are we going to do?’ Clark asked desperately.
‘I’m working on it,’ Schofield said, gazing up at the thick steel hull above them, looking for escape options.
With his back pressed against a concrete block, he poked his head around one of the outer corners and looked all the way down the dry-dock pit—and saw the high steel sea gate that separated the pit from the ice-covered pool of water at the eastern end of the hall.
The mechanics of the dry-dock leapt into his mind.
To get an enormous Typhoon into the dock, you lowered the sea gate, flooded the dry-dock, and sailed your sub into it. Then you raised the sea gate again and drained the dry-dock, lowering the sub onto the concrete blocks in the process and giving yourself a clean and dry environment to work on the submarine.
The sea gate . . .
Schofield eyed it closely, thought of all the water being held back behind it. Looked the other way: toward the bow of the sub, and saw it.
It was their only shot.
He turned to the others. ‘You guys got Maghooks on you?’
‘Er, yeah.’
‘Yes.’
‘Get ready to use ’em,’ Schofield said, looking down at the great steel sea gate, three storeys high and 90 feet wide. He drew his own Maghook from his back-mounted holster.
‘We going that way, sir?’ Clark asked.
‘Nope. We’re going in the other direction, but to do that we need to blow open that sea gate.’
‘Blow open the sea gate?’ Clark gasped, looking at Book.
Book II shrugged. ‘This is standard. He destroys things—’
Just then, an unexpected volley of bullets raked the concrete blocks all around them. It had come from the direction of the sea gate.
Schofield ducked for cover, peered out, and saw that ten more mercenary soldiers had dropped into the pit at that end.
Christ, he thought, now they were stuck in the pit between two sets of bad guys.
The new group of mercenaries began to advance.
‘Screw this,’ he said.
Cedric Wexley watched the dry-dock pit from high above.
He saw his two squads of mercenaries closing in on Schofield and his men from both sides.
A cold smile cracked his face.
This was too easy.
Schofield grabbed two Thermite-Amatol demolition charges from his combat webbing. ‘Gentlemen. Maghooks.’
They all pulled out their Maghooks.
‘Now do this,’ Schofield moved to the port-side edge of the Typhoon, raised his Maghook and fired it at close range up into the hull of the sub.
Clangggggg!
Clark and Book II did the same.
Clangggggg! Clangggggg!
Schofield peered down the length of the submarine. ‘When the wave hits, let your Maghook ropes play out, so we can move along the outside of the sub.’
‘Wave?’ Clark said. ‘What wave . . . ?’
But Schofield didn’t answer him.
He simply took the two demolition charges in his hands and selected the timer switch he wanted.
Timer switches on Thermite-Amatol charges come in three colours: red, green and blue. Depressing the red switch gives you five seconds. Green gives you thirty seconds. Blue: one minute.
&nbs
p; Schofield chose red.
Then he hurled the two charges down the length of the dry-dock pit, over the heads of the advancing mercenary team, sending the two high-powered explosives bouncing into the plate-steel sea gate like a pair of tennis balls. They came to rest at the gate’s weakest point, at the spot where it met the pit’s concrete right-side wall.
Five seconds. Four . . .
‘This is going to hurt . . .’ Book II said, wrapping the rope of his Maghook around his forearm. Clark did the same.
Three . . . two . . .
‘One,’ Schofield whispered, eyeing the dam. ‘Now.’
Boom.
The twin blasts of the Thermite-Amatol demolition charges shook the walls of the entire dry-dock building.
A blinding-white flash of light lit up the sea gate. Smoke rushed up the length of the pit, filling the alleyways between the giant concrete blocks as it roared forward, consuming the nearest group of assassins, enveloping everything in its path, including Schofield’s team.
There was a moment of eerie silence . . .
And then came the crack—an almighty, ear-splitting craaaack—as the wounded sea gate broke under the weight of the water pressing against it, and 100 million litres of water rushed into the pit, bursting through the smoke.
A wall of water.
The immense body of liquid created an incredible sound—it roared down the length of the dry-dock pit: foaming, roiling, bounding forward.
The nearest group of mercenaries were simply blasted off their feet by the wall of water, and hurled westward.
Schofield, Book II and Clark were next in line.
The wall of water just collected them where they stood—one second they were there, the next they were gone. It lifted them instantly off their feet, flinging them like rag dolls toward the bow-end of the Typhoon, bouncing them along the side of its hull.
The other team of mercenaries was also taken by the rushing wall of water. They were smashed into the solid concrete wall at the far end of the dry-dock, many of them going under as the waves of roiling water crashed against the edge of the 200-metre-long pit.
Schofield and his men, however, didn’t hit the end of the pit.
As the roaring body of water had collected them, they’d held grimly onto their Maghook launchers as the ropes connected to their magnetic hooks unspooled at a phenomenal rate.
When they came alongside the bow of the Typhoon, Schofield had yelled, ‘Clamp now!’
He had then jammed his finger down on a button on his Maghook’s grip, initiating a clamping mechanism inside it that stopped the unspooling of its rope.
Book II and Clark did the same . . . and the three of them jolted to simultaneous halts right next to the bow of the Typhoon, the rushing water kicking up blast-sprays all around their bodies.
Next to them, exactly where Schofield had seen it before, was the yawning opening of the Typhoon’s port-side torpedo tubes—the tubes which had evidently been undergoing repairs when Krask-8 had been abandoned.
At the moment, the torpedo tubes lay a foot above the surface of the inrushing water.
‘Get into the tubes!’ Schofield yelled into his mike. ‘Into the sub!’
Book and Clark did as they were told, and squirming and struggling against the rushing water, entered the submarine.
Sudden silence.
Schofield wriggled out of the torpedo tube last of all and found himself standing inside a Soviet Typhoon-class ballistic missile submarine.
It was a world of cold steel. Racks that had once contained torpedoes occupied the centre of the room. Rows of pipes lined the ceiling. The stench of body odour—the smell of fear, the smell of submariners—filled the air.
Two fat waterfalls of seawater now gushed in through the sub’s open torpedo tubes, rapidly filling the cramped room.
It was largely dark in here: the only light, the grey daylight that crept in through the now-flooding torpedo tubes. Schofield and the others flicked on their barrel-mounted flashlights.
‘This way,’ Schofield said, charging out of the torpedo room, his legs sloshing through the rising water.
The three Marines bolted through the Typhoon’s imposing silo hall next—a long high-ceilinged chamber that contained twenty gigantic missile silos; tall tubular structures that rose from floor to ceiling, dwarfing them.
As he ran past the silos, Schofield saw that the access hatches on some of them were open, revealing hollow emptiness inside. The hatches on at least six of the silos, however, remained closed—indicating that they still contained missiles.
‘Where to now?’ Book II called forward.
Schofield said, ‘The control room! I need information on these assholes!’
He hit the nearest rung-ladder on the fly.
Thirty seconds later, Shane Schofield entered the control room of the Typhoon.
Dust lay everywhere. Mould grew in the corners of the room. Only the occasional glinting reflection from his men’s flashlights betrayed the shiny metallic surfaces under the dust.
Schofield hurried over to the command platform, to the periscope located there. He yanked the scope up out of the floor, turned to Book II.
‘See if you can get some power up. This sub would’ve been connected to the base’s geothermal supply. There might still be some residual power. Fire up the Omnibus central control system. Then get the ESM and radio antennas online.’
‘Got it,’ Book II said, hurrying away.
The periscope reached its full height. Schofield put his eye to it. A basic optical periscope, it didn’t need any electric power to work.
Through it, Schofield saw the dry-dock hall outside—saw the swirling water filling the pit around the Typhoon—saw a half-dozen mercenaries standing at the edge of the pit, watching it fill with seawater.
Pivoting the periscope, Schofield lifted his view, casting his gaze over the balcony level that overlooked the dry-dock pit.
There he saw more mercenaries, saw one man in particular gesticulating wildly, sending another half-dozen men running toward the gangway that connected the Typhoon’s conning tower to the balcony level.
‘I see you . . .’ Schofield said to the man. ‘Book? How’s that power coming!’
‘Just a second, my Russian’s a bit rusty—wait, here it is . . .’
Book flicked some switches and suddenly—vmmm—a small collection of green lights burst to life all around Schofield.
‘Okay, try it now,’ Book said.
Schofield snatched up a pair of dusty headphones and engaged the sub’s Electronic Support Measures antenna—a feature on most modern submarines, an ESM antenna is little more than a roving scanner, it simply trawls over every available radio frequency, searching for activity.
Voices came through Schofield’s headset instantly.
‘—crazy bastard blew open the fucking sea gate!’
‘—they went in through the torpedo tubes. They’re inside the sub!’
Then a calmer voice.
As he gazed through the periscope, Schofield saw that it was the commander-type individual up on the balcony level who was speaking.
‘—Blue Team, storm the sub via the conning tower. Green Team, find another gangway and use it as a bridge. Split up into two groups of two and enter the sub via the forward and rear escape hatches—’
Schofield listened to the voice intently.
Crisp accent. South African. Calm, too. No sign of pressure or anxiety.
That wasn’t a good sign.
Usually a commander who has just seen a dozen of his men swept away by a tidal wave would be somewhat rattled. This guy, however, was completely calm.
‘—Sir, this is radar. That first incoming aerial contact has been identified as a Yak-141 strike fighter. It’s the Hungarian.’
‘—ETA?’ the commander asked.
‘—Based on current speed, five minutes, sir.’
The commander seemed to ponder this news. Then he said, ‘—Captain Micheleaux. Send m
e every other man we’ve got. I’d like to finish this before our competitors arrive.’
‘—It will be done,’ a French-accented voice replied.
Schofield’s mind went into overdrive.
They were about to storm the Typhoon—through the conning tower and the forward and rear escape hatches.
And reinforcements were on their way . . . but from where?
All right, he caught himself. Rewind. Think!
Your enemy. Who are they?
They’re a mercenary force of some kind.
Why are they here?
I don’t know. The only clue is the missing heads. McCabe and Farrell’s heads . . .
What else?
That South African guy spoke of ‘competitors’ who were on their way. But it was a strange word to use . . . competitors.
What options do you have?
Not many. We have no contact with our home base; no immediate means of escape; at least not until the Rangers arrive, and that’s a minimum of thirty minutes away . . .
Damn it, Schofield thought, a whole half-hour, at the very minimum. That was his enemies’ biggest advantage.
Time.
Aside from the ‘competitors’ they had mentioned, they had all the time in the world to hunt Schofield and his men down.
Then that’s the first thing we have to change, Schofield thought. We have to impose a time constraint on this situation.
He looked about himself, assessing the constellation of pilot lights that illuminated the control room.
He had power . . .
Which meant maybe he could—
He thought of the six missile silos down below that had been firmly sealed, while all the others had been opened.
There might still be missiles in them. Sure, the Russians would have removed the warheads, but maybe the missiles remained.
‘Here,’ Schofield invited Clark to the periscope. ‘Keep an eye on the bad guys outside.’
Clark seized the periscope, while Schofield dashed to a nearby console. ‘Book. Give me a hand here.’
‘What are you thinking?’ Book II asked.
‘I want to know if the missiles on this sub still work.’