Chris Ryan Extreme: Most Wanted

Book 3: Chris Ryan Extreme

by Chris Ryan

Genres: Action & Adventure; War & Military; Thrillers; Spy Thrillers

Synopsis

The third book in the Chris Ryan Extreme series. Disavowed. No one can escape their past forever. Ex-SAS operator John Bald knows that better than most. So when the Firm corners Bald in Kazakhstan with a promise to wipe the slate clean, he reluctantly agrees to return to the frontline. His mission: hunt down a fugitive Russian oligarch suspected of murdering a beautiful young Westminster aide. Viktor Klich knows too much. Now Bald must catch Klich - before the Russian security services get to him first. Desperate. But what begins as a simple snatch-and-grab soon descends into a brutal fight for survival as Bald pursues Klich from the violent streets of Caracas to the brash glamour of Dubai, leaving a trail of blood and bullets in his wake. As he closes in on his quarry Bald finds his loyalties called into question. And when the mission goes wrong, he's accused of being complicit in a dangerous deceit. Deadly. Now Bald is a wanted man. Only one person can help him: Viktor Klich, the oligarch he was ordered to kill. In a world where nothing is as it seems, Bald will have to call on all his skills to stay alive, protect his former enemy - and uncover a dark secret that goes right to the heart of the establishment ... The Chris Ryan Extreme books take you even further into the heart of the mission with more extreme action, more extreme language and more extreme pace. Like Call of Duty or Medal of Honour you'll feel part of the team. Chris Ryan Extreme: Most Wanted has previously been published as four separate shorter missions. Now in one ebook to keep you at the centre of the action.

Release date: November 6, 2014

Publisher: Coronet

Print pages: 400

Sample

Eight

1702 hours.

Rodríguez muscled his way through the throng of operators, Bald and Gardner chasing his shadow. Then the cop took a right and swept into the transept, where big slabs of rose light from the stained-glass windows were cast onto the stone floor. At the far wall there was a shrine to the Virgin Mary, who wore a halo of fake gold. A guy stood there, beneath a window, dust motes swirling around him, his face tense. He was busily thumbing rounds into an ammo clip. Each round made a heavy clack as it locked into place. A Glock 19 semi-automatic pistol was lying on a table next to the shrine. Two clips laid out on the table, and a box of ammo. The God of Hair had looked kindly on this guy, as He did to all Latinos. The guy was five-six and about the same wide. His sleeves were rolled purposefully up to his elbows. His skin was darker than a Madeleine McCann joke. A pair of colourful insignia sewn onto the epaulettes of his assault suit marked him out as a captain. Monzant, Bald decided.

The captain stopped thumbing in rounds. Snapped his eyes to Bald.

‘Who the fuck are you?’

He had a voice like water being poured over hot coals.

Rodríguez said something to the captain in Spanish. Flashed the two passports at him. Monzant grunted. Jerked his head at Bald and said, ‘My sergeant tell me you wise guys are the British soldiers?’

‘That’s right,’ said Gardner.

Monzant harrumphed and turned his attention back to the table. Cunt, Bald thought. Monzant plucked a round from the box of ammo. The front of the box was red with a white bar running down the side. White text on the red stripe read, ‘9mm LUGER. 9mm PARA. 9x19.’ There was a logo in the bottom-right corner, a diagonal ‘B’ with an ‘S’ on top. Bald recognized the logo. Sellier & Bellot. Czech company, French owner. Bald had used their .38 Special in a full-metal jacket, and it had been a sturdy round. He figured the niner would be just as dependable.

‘You look too old to be soldiers.’

‘What we’ve got, you never fucking lose,’ said Bald.

Monzant shot Bald a look straight out of the Eyefuck Manual. Grunted again.

‘Way I see it, the only reason you’re here is because some fuckhole in a suit signed a piece of paper. But on this operation the fuckholes can go fuck their own bitch mothers. I’m calling the shots on this one. You do as I say, and you do it when I tell you to do it. I don’t care if you’re fucking SAS.’

‘Sure, mate,’ Gardner said, holding up his hands in mock surrender. ‘Whatever you say.’

Bald gritted his teeth. Sweet Jesus, he hated working with this appeasing prick.

Monzant thumbed in another round.

‘How much do you know?’

‘About as much as I know about your love life,’ Bald said.

Monzant laughed.

‘I got no time to tell you every fucking detail. These gunmen, they attacked the villa about an hour ago. The security guards at the villa, they stopped the guys in their tracks, but some of the gunmen made it through the back door. Got the drop on our guys. We lost couple of good men. Those gunshots you heard? That’s the gunmen shooting at the cops from the first-floor windows. Pushing us back. But see, now we gonna strike from the south. Hit ’em with everything we got.’ Monzant punched his right fist into the palm of his left. ‘In eight minutes these bitches gonna regret the day they popped out their mammas’ chochos.’

Bald thought about the set-up. The Russians were holed up inside. But there was no way they would ever be able to slip away with Klich now. Not with half the fucking army on their case. He thought about this while Monzant pressed the final round into the clip. The captain gently slid the clip into the underside of the Glock 19 pistol grip and it clicked decisively into place.

‘How many gunmen are we talking about?’ Bald asked.

‘Six. They came dressed as golfers.’

Monzant saw the look of confusion scrawled over Bald’s face and laughed.

‘The villa backs onto the golf course,’ he said. ‘The gunmen dressed so they wouldn’t attract attention. They just looked like six guys going for some rounds, shooting the shit. Fucking assault rifles in their golf bags, believe that?’

Bald believed. He knew exactly what the Russians were capable of. They were sneaky and fearless. If he was up against some local toughs, he wouldn’t be worried. But Land had said these guys were ex-Spetsnaz. They had SF training. They would be heavily armed and hard as fuck to dislodge.

‘What about the hostages?’

Monzant shook his head, like a guy who had bet on black and wished he’d bet on red.

‘We just got reports they killed a diplomat.’

Gardner and Bald swapped worried looks.

‘Any idea who?’

‘Yeah. Some fucking adviser to Chávez. Name of Rincón.’ Monzant looking puzzled at the relief playing out on the two Brits’ faces. Forgot about it, and went on, ‘They dragged his ass into the toilet and blew his fucking brains out. That’s why we’re moving in now. Orders of El Presidente. We got to stop the gunmen before they kill anyone else.’

So Klich is still alive, Bald thought. But what the Russians were planning to do with Klich troubled him. He pressed a hand to his left temple and could feel his veins thumping away beneath the skin.

‘You’re worried about your citizen? The black bitch? Don’t be,’ said Monzant, a crafty smile tickling at the corners of his lips. ‘We’ll do everything we can to bring her back safely to you. You have my word.’

‘I’m not worried about that,’ said Bald.

Monzant tugged back the slider. Released it. The slider snapped forward, half a dozen parts clicking and clanging as the first round boosted out of the clip and crashed into the chamber. Then he stashed the Glock in his hip holster, before looking at Bald.

‘So tell me what’s beefing you, gringo. Because that look on your face – I seen guys on death row look less stressed than you.’

Bald stiffened his gaze at Monzant. ‘You’re planning on crashing through the front door.’

‘Give them a friendly Venezuelan welcome.’ There was a glint in the captain’s eyes. ‘Got a problem with that, gringo?’

Bald boiled up inside, rising to the bait. ‘Yeah, I do. You’re gonna turn the villa into a fucking bloodbath.’

Monzant shot around, snorting through his nostrils, neck muscles pulled tight like cables. ‘You need a reality check,’ he said. ‘This ain’t no polite European siege. The first thing happens in a siege, you get the gunmen calling with a list of demands a mile long. They want a hundred million dollars, they want their bros released from jail, they want Scarlett Johansson sucking their dicks night and day,’ Monzant making a blowjob gesture with his hand. ‘They only kill people later. When they realize they ain’t getting shit. These guys, they started killing people first.’

‘Any demands?’ This from Gardner.

Monzant nodded. ‘They want a helicopter, take them all the way up to Havana. It was me in that villa, I’d ask for Scarlett Johansson. They got more chance of getting pussy than a free passage to Cuba.’

Bald now understood how the Russians planned to bug out of the shit. Cuba still enjoyed a cosy relationship with their old Soviet pals in Moscow. Strings would be pulled. False identities arranged, they’d be smuggled back east with Klich. The plan had balls, and in any other country it might just work. But with Monzant calling the shots, it was going to end up as a killing spree. And Klich would be caught in the crossfire.

Bald said, ‘You need to change your plan. These guys you’re dealing with? They’re not your average local toughs. They’re serious players.’

Monzant stuffed the two spare clips into a pouch on his utility belt. ‘Tell you what,’ he said. ‘How about I don’t change the plan, and you go fuck yourself.’

‘People will die,’ said Bald.

‘People are already dying. Rincón was the first. Pretty soon they’ll start shooting up the rest. Maybe they already are. The sooner we go in, the quicker those assholes are fucking history.’ He suddenly stopped and eyed Bald suspiciously. ‘Unless there’s something you know that we don’t?’

‘No,’ Bald said with a straight face. ‘We’re in the dark about these guys, same as you.’

‘Good. Then shut the fuck up and get ready to move out.’

‘But—’

‘No more talking. Now we act.’

Gardner made a face at Bald. The face told him not to protest, that Monzant had made his mind up. Monzant had already tuned out. He was hurrying past Bald and steering out of the transept. Rodríguez and Gardner filed out after him.

Bald felt his BlackBerry spark up. He fished it out of his hip pocket. The display beamed a number at him. Bald recognized the first five digits: +44208 – 44 for the UK, 208 for London. He knew who the caller was before he’d even tapped the answer key.

‘Can you talk?’

Land’s voice crackled down the line. There was background noise, sounded like radio interference. Bald held the BlackBerry close to his right ear and plugged a finger into his left. He said in a low voice, ‘Your toughs dropped me in the shit. Almost got me slotted in some fucking slum.’

‘Yeeeees,’ Land said. ‘Terribly sorry about that.’ He cleared his throat. ‘How’s Joe, by the way? I hope you two are getting on OK, mmm?’

‘Like a paedo in a prison shower.’

‘Once the mission is complete,’ Land went on, ‘I need you to tie up a loose end.’

‘You didn’t mention anything about a loose end before.’

‘You should have read the small print, old bean. You signed up for the job. No ifs or buts. And you’ll damn well do what I say, or I call off our little arrangement and pass your file to Interpol.’

‘I’m getting bored of your threats,’ said Bald.

‘No joke, John. One click of my fingers and you’ll be bumped right to the top of their wanted list. And believe me, that is not a very comfortable place to be.’

Bald dug his fingers into the palm of his hand, like he was digging them into Leo Land’s throat.

‘What kind of loose end?’ he said.

There was a long pause.

Then Land said, ‘I need you to kill Joe.’

Eighteen

2019 hours.

Bald’s eyes swivelled from left to right across the dorm. It was a single large, rectangular room with four bunk beds crammed into the near-left corner and a clutter of cooking pots and pans and a forty-pound sack of rice to the right. The floor was warped lino and the walls were bare concrete decorated with old family snaps. The room was small. Bald had seen bigger parking spaces. Three men were curled up in the bottom bunks. Coffee-bean faces snoring loudly. Bald switched his focus to the far end of the room. Four metres away a frayed curtain divided the sleeping area from the shitter. A light source was glowing on the other side of the curtain, and Bald could see the silhouette of a man. Klich. Getting his fucking end away with some Indian kid. Bald powered across the sleeping area, his feet brushing aside pots and cutlery. He grabbed the curtain and yanked it back along the rail, preparing to pound Klich into submission.

The figure behind the curtain shot his hands in the air. He was alone, his face lit up by a naked light bulb. Bald lowered the revolver. The guy wasn’t Klich. He was just some Indian kid, nineteen or twenty. Pants round his ankles. There was a hole in the ground beside him and next to it a coiled hosepipe and a wooden bucket. The stench of steaming shit hung thick in the air. The kid’s eyes were wide open and fixed on the Anaconda. He had a look of silent shock on his face. For a moment they just stared at each other. Then a drum beat of footsteps sounded from Bald’s six. He spun around. Spotted a man storming through the open doorway of the room.

The guy was dressed like a bum. He wore a pair of olive-green camo trousers and a plain black T-shirt and a wood-camo army jacket. He held a stubby gun in a two-handed grip. The barrel caught the gleam from the light bulb and winked wickedly at Bald. Two bullets shot out of the snout in rapid succession. But they missed. Bald felt the heat of the rounds rip through his hair. The clatter roused two of the Indians from their beauty sleep. There was a slow second between that and the bum readjusting his aim. Less than a second for Bald to get a fucking shot in. He drew the Anaconda level with the mass of badly dressed target four metres away and depressed the trigger.

The weapon jolted in his hand. A flame licked out of the barrel and briefly lit up the room in a wash of acidic white. There was an overloud roar like a thunderbolt crashing through the roof. The round thumped into the shooter. He grunted and tumbled backwards, landing on the pots and pans, and the two Indians bolted out of the door, wailing and flapping their arms. A third guy, an old man with no teeth or hair, sat rigid in his bed. His lips and eyes trembling at something behind Bald.

Now Bald charged over to the bum. The guy was lying at the foot of the doorway. Still alive and pawing at his dick. There was a gout of brown-red across his groin where a .44-Mag round had made its mark. He was writhing around in agony, his head rocking back and forth against the sack of rice. Bald glanced back at the shitter and suddenly understood why the old geezer had been wailing. The skinny Indian kid was slumped against the wall. Trauma wound on his Adam’s apple the size of a ten-pence piece. The bum had missed Bald but slotted the kid.

He looked back at the bum. His face was pale and he had an unkempt beard and he stank of piss and spent brass. But mostly piss. He tried to say something to Bald. But Bald didn’t have time to quiz the guy. He pointed the tip of the Anaconda at his temple and fired. The revolver kicked up half an inch in his grip, the bum flinched and the round veered narrowly off target and took off a chunk of his forehead. Brain spattered the lino floor.

Then Bald looked up at the shitter and he noticed something else. As well as the Indian kid with the hole in his neck, there was a door to the right of the shitter. The door was open.

That’s where Klich must have got to, Bald thought. He knew that the sounds of the firefight would have made Klich scarper. The Russian would likely be retreating to the Lincoln to make his getaway. Bald could feel the slim window of opportunity slamming in his face. He turned to resume the hunt for Klich. But then three rounds lit up at the main door of the room. Two metres from his position. The rounds bounced off the lino and slapped into the wall above the bunk beds. Bald spun around and looked to the doorway. Caught sight of a figure outside. Across the road, twenty metres away.

Racing towards him.

The guy looked like the long-lost twin of the dead bum on the floor. The old Indian guy leapt out of his bed and raced past Bald, out into the street. Bad timing. Two bullets punched holes in his upper torso. One of the rounds bored its way through his chest and a fractured second later it was exiting through his right eye socket.

Bald scooped up the gun lying by the bum. He was now the proud owner of a Heckler & Koch UMP submachine gun. Bald judged its weight to see if it was loaded. He didn’t have time to fuck about with the clip. The UMP felt heavy with 9x19mm Parabellum. The fire selector was already switched to two-round burst. Bald looked through the doorway. The second bum was drawing near to him. Nine metres from the door now. Close enough for Bald to see him tensing his finger on the trigger. Ready to give Bald the good news.

Bald took aim at the shooter and fired.

Two rounds spat out of the UMP. Fucking missed. But the bum was unsettled by the fire coming his way. He steered away from the building. Away from the fatal funnel of fire. Bald calmly adjusted his aim. Relaxed his shoulder muscles. Eased the tension out of his guts. He lined up the shooter between the rear aperture and the front sight. Kept the rear aperture in focus and the body marginally out of focus. He aimed at the torso, not the head. With a moving target in poor visibility, your best bet was to go for the high-percentage shot.

He unloaded two more rounds at the guy. This time they felt surgical. They felt good. Bald got that same feeling a golfer gets when he hits a ball and knows he’s chalked up a hole-in-one even before the ball has fallen from the sky. Seeing blood puffing out of the target’s guts, and the guy crumple in a heap, he congratulated himself on a good kill.

Lights were flicking on in the dormitories on the other side of the street. Workers were rushing to the old Indian guy and the dead bum in the street. At first Bald thought they were being good citizens. Then he saw them squabbling over the dead men’s coins and notes and phones. Somewhere in the distance a car horn blared. Skinner sounding the warning. Bald was running out of time. He wheeled away from the door and made a snap decision to ditch the Anaconda. The revolver was big and clumsy, and having it stuffed it into the waistband of his jeans would slow him down. He hurried back into the room and through the door near the shitter.

The door led into a courtyard hemmed in on all sides by other dormitories. The courtyard was twelve metres long and eight wide, with a shade tree in the middle. Washing lines sagged across the width of the yard, forming a soggy curtain that obscured his line of vision. Bald spotted a pool of raw sewage beside the tree. The smell was a hundred times more potent than in the shitter. Swiping aside the clothes hanging on the lines, Bald made for the far end of the courtyard. When he could see the end, he stopped dead in his tracks.

Six metres away from Bald a narrow alleyway tunnelled between two identical-looking three-storey buildings. The alley was six metres long and gave onto a rutted road. The Lincoln was resting at the alley’s mouth and a grainy figure with a mullet and a black shirt was flinging open the rear passenger door.

Bald snapped the UMP level with his shoulder and lined up the sights with the Lincoln’s wheelbase. He’d target the vehicle first. Immobilize it and stop Klich from making his getaway. Once the Lincoln and whoever else was inside were chop suey, he’d nab the Russian on foot and escort him back to the Panamera.

Then Bald felt something hard and bony collide with the back of his skull. The blow was devastating. It was like someone had wired up his jaw to a defibrillator. Next thing he knew his legs were buckling and his face was hitting dirt. A boot swung at him and struck him on the right side of his ribcage. Steel toecap slamming into bone. The blow winded Bald. He breathed in and needles of pain flared up along the length of his chest. Another boot connected and Bald heard something snap inside. He clenched his jaw. Get up, you cunt, a voice roared at him from his guts. Get up or fucking die. A third kick jabbed at his upper chest. Bald battened down the nausea. Spat out dust and mucus. Up ahead he saw Klich climbing into the Lincoln.

Then Bald reached for the UMP. The grip was three tantalizing inches from his fingertips. The figure standing over Bald side-footed the weapon. Then he rolled onto his front and caught a boot square in the guts. A massive wave of nausea exploded in his chest. Fuck the pain! he told himself repeatedly. Fuck it with bells on. Another kick fired down at him but this time he was ready and he thrust out his right hand and grabbed the guy’s foot by the ankle. There was nothing martial-arts about his strategy. Lying on the ground and stricken by your opponent, you left all the fancy stuff at the door. You had to drag your enemy down into the trenches. To a dark and savage place. He leaned forward and bit deep into the ankle. Blood oozed out of the joint and the guy howled.

Now Bald wrapped both his arms around the leg at knee height and wrenched the leg to his left. Threw the guy off balance and sent him crashing to the ground. He landed a half-metre to Bald’s three o’clock. Now Bald sprang to his feet and launched himself at the guy as he lay on his back. He was about to fucking get it, big time. Bald kicked him in the guts. Then lowered a boot into his balls and sent him into squeals of agony. The guy curled up in the foetal position, trying to shield himself from the blows. But Bald wasn’t done. He kicked his back, blow after savage blow.

He shaped to boot him again.

‘John!’ the guy said. ‘Don’t fucking do it, mate.’

Bald froze. The voice was pure East End. Sounded familiar somehow. For the first time, Bald looked down at the face of his enemy. It was half hidden beneath a thick beard, but he recognized that face all the same.

‘It’s me,’ the guy was saying. ‘Your old mucker, innit? Dave Hands.’

Eleven

1759 hours.

The stacks were three metres tall. They touched the damn ceiling. Bald counted at least fifty stacks stretching in a neat row. It was long and tall and seven stacks deep. Bald took a couple of steps closer to the wall of money. Ran his hand over the edges. The stacks were arranged in bundles, each bundle the thickness of a brick.

‘Fuck me,’ he said. ‘There’s got to be tens of millions here.’

Bald eased out a bundle and flicked through it. Benjamin Franklin stared sternly out at him from the face of each bank note. The bills were crisp and clean. The smell of freshly printed money filled his nostrils, made him feel warm and fuzzy inside, made him feel good about himself and life.

‘Let’s get a move on,’ said Gardner. ‘Klich is still out there. And the gunmen.’

Bald stayed silent. He stared at the money, thinking about all the things he could do with it.

‘Mate,’ Gardner said, his voice rising. ‘We’re running out of time.’

Bald made a promise to himself, to come back here once he had Klich. Line his pockets. He bid his goodbyes to Mr Franklin and strode back out to the landing, the smell of greenbacks on his fingers, quietly congratulating himself on his discovery.

Moving anti-clockwise, the two ex-Blades manoeuvred their way to the door at the nine o’clock mark. Gardner was a couple of metres behind Bald. Gunfire sparked up on the ground floor. Crackled like loud radio static. Monzant putting down suppressive fire on the gang, shouting hoarsely above the ca-racks. His FNC was the only weapon Bald could hear being discharged. At least the guy’s keeping his end of the bargain, he thought. Pinning the gang down. But he also knew there were twelve of them and only one of Monzant. The battle-hardened part of his brain knew that Monzant couldn’t hold them off for ever.

They cleared the room. There was less money in this room. A couple of knee-high stacks of greenbacks piled against the far wall, a cavity at head height in that wall. The floor was littered with chunks of plaster and wallpaper. Someone had gone at the wall with a mallet. Several bundles of cash had been removed from the stacks. Each bundle was thick as a brick and sealed with elastic bands and shoved inside a clear plastic bag. Bald spied a few bundles crammed into the wall cavity in a desperate attempt to hide money from somebody. The stacks called out to him, sang him the sweet tune of money.

Gardner said, ‘Two rooms down. One to go.’

Bald said, ‘Our man’s in that room.’

‘And the Russians too. The hostages are there, we’re still missing two gunmen—’

‘They’re guarding the hostages.’

Gardner nodded, then frowned. ‘Unless the CS gas knocked them out.’

‘Only one way to find out. I’m right behind you, mate.’

Bald waited a couple of seconds for the sound of Gardner’s heavy footsteps on the landing. Then he liberated a couple of tightly wrapped bundles from the pile beside the wall. Each bundle was surprisingly light, thought Bald. Yet there had to be a couple of hundred bucks in each. He had a four hundred large in his fucking hand. More than Leo Land’s pension fund. And nobody would notice it had gone missing. He stuffed the cash into the pockets of his Belstaff and exited the room.

Four rapid bursts of gunfire echoed up from the entrance hall.

‘Guys, a little help down here!’ Monzant shouted up the stairs, his tone rabid. ‘The fuckers are getting close!’

Just another minute, Bald thought, that’s all I need. He let Gardner lead the way to the door at the three o’clock point. Gardner arrived there two seconds ahead of him, turned and made a shush gesture, then pressed his ear to the door. He motioned for Bald to do the same.

Bald killed his breath in his throat. Put his ear to the wood and listened. The door was hollow and muffled voices carried through from the other side. Wailing, moaning and coughing. Among them was a woman’s voice, throaty and hysterical. She was bawling something over and over again in Spanish, like an incessant fucking chant. Bald looked at Gardner. Gardner looked right back at Bald. Their minds clicked through the same combinations, their eyes glowing as they registered the same thought at the same time.

The hostages.

This is it, thought Bald.

He got down on his knees and bent down to peer under the door, at the half-inch crack of light between it and the floor. He could make out a pair of combat boots, black and weathered. Left foot tapping out a beat. The feet weren’t pacing up and down. A gunman, Bald figured. Guarding the hostages. Lack of movement suggested the guy was sitting on a chair. Bald looked up at Gardner and signed to him to train his Glock on the door handle. Now Bald sat up and trained his FNC on an imaginary spot at waist height, where he figured the gunman’s head would be. He gave Gardner a slight nod.

Now!

Gardner unloaded three rounds at the handle. The noise was thunderous. The force of the shots trashed the lock. Bald heard a wet thump coming from the other side of the door. A body dropping. Then Gardner booted the heavy door at waist height. It swung back on its hinges before it knocked against something and jolted, refusing to swing open beyond a forty-five-degree angle. Bald looked through the apertures at the imaginary head he was aiming at. The door swung open a few inches more, and the head became real. Bald had the gunman dead in his sights. He was rising from his chair, AK-47 in his hands. Looking up just in time to acknowledge Bald and the rifle barrel, and the world of pain coming his way.

Bald squeezed the trigger. Dropped the guy.

He spotted the second corpse immediately behind the door. The last gunman. Bullets stitching the guy’s throat. There had been two gunmen behind the door, not one. They had unwittingly slotted the sixth and final fucker as he had been creeping up to the door. That’s it, thought Bald with a deep sigh of relief. All the gunmen ar. . .