Chris Ryan Extreme: Night Strike

Book 2: Chris Ryan Extreme

by Chris Ryan

Genres: War & Military; Spy Thrillers

Synopsis

The second book in the Chris Ryan Extreme series.

Former SAS hero John Bald is a man at war with himself and fighting a losing battle with the bottle. But then he is reluctantly thrust back into battle...

In the race to develop ever more powerful weapons, technology has become the new frontline in global terrorism. And when one of America's most cutting-edge defence contractors suspects a sleeper cell operating in its midst, the Firm reaches out to its most cold-blooded son. Bald's mission: kill the sleeper before they can smuggle top-secret weaponry into the hands of the West's deadliest enemies.

But the mission goes sideways, and Bald is the fall guy. Now he must pursue the sleeper from the ghettos of Florida to the war-torn streets of Tripoli, in a relentless hunt for the technology and the truth. Shadowed every step of the way by a ruthless CIA hitman, Bald soon finds that the lines between friend and enemy are blurred, and he'll have to call on all his warrior instincts to stay alive...

The Chris Ryan Extreme books take you even further into the heart of the mission with even more extreme action, more extreme language and more extreme pace. Like Call of Duty or Medal of Honor, you'll feel part of the team.

Release date: August 1, 2013

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 335

Sample

eight

2359 hours.

Cave took out his BlackBerry Torch and started tapping out emails and bossing subordinates on the phone. Bald saw London’s lights fading on the horizon as the driver pulled onto the M20. The land had become a basin of dense shadows, as if black snow had fallen from the sky and blanketed the fields and trees. Bald could feel his brain pounding inside his skull. They skated past Ashford International Airport, the Lexus clocking eighty, and Bald feared that things were about to get bad for him.

‘We’ve been in close contact with the CIA for the past three months,’ Cave said after ending a call. ‘Usually the Agency wouldn’t share their lunch with us let alone operational info. But in this case they’ve got no choice. They know the sleeper’s bosses are planning to attack Britain.’

Bald said, ‘Who’s the sleeper working for?’

‘Take a wild guess.’

‘The Taliban? Al-Qaeda?’

Cave pulled a face, as if he’d just drunk a glass of piss. ‘Get real, John. The Taliban are bogged down in Afghanistan. And as for Al-Qaeda, those jokers been irrelevant for longer than the White House would dare to admit. We’re talking about a sleeper cell being groomed for several years. Possibly since they were at university. That level of planning and foresight is alien to such groups.’

‘Then who?’

‘They call themselves Lashkar-e-Taiba. They’re the sadistic bastards who masterminded the Mumbai terrorist attacks.’

A couple of miles south of Ashford the driver pulled off the M20 onto Bad Munstereifel Road. Cave continued, ‘Killing Bin Laden hasn’t changed a thing. Al-Qaeda were already a spent force. You will appreciate that we all knew that. We just couldn’t say it publicly. But the important thing about Bin Laden’s death was that he was holed up in Pakistan, right on the doorstep of the biggest military base in the bloody country. Pakistan is where the next generation of terror groups will come from, and Lashkar-e-Taiba think big. They’ve got funding and they’re not afraid to kill. And with Bin Laden out of the way, they sense this is their big moment.’

‘Bully for them,’ said Bald, and rubbed his temples.

Cave frowned. ‘You don’t sound very concerned about any of this?’

Bald closed his eyes. He could feel the pressure building. The invisible band around his head tightened. He looked down at the palms of his hands. Not this, not now, he thought. ‘Those dickheads at the Agency are big boys,’ he said. ‘I’m sure they can take care of the sleeper themselves.’

‘But that’s my point.’ Cave squirmed irritably in his seat. ‘They can’t. You know this, for fuck’s sake. You’ve been in charge of recruiting for the job.’

Bald said nothing.

‘I saw how you handled yourself in those interviews and of course you’re the dirtiest fighter we have, John Boy. So this is what’s going to happen. You’re going to go to America and kill the sleeper. We’ll fly you in and give you all the supplies you need. But—’

Cave left the sentence hanging in the air while he again attended to the Torch. The screen was flashing with an incoming call. Cave smiled wanly at Bald.

‘You know the drill. If it goes tits up, we’ll deny all knowledge of the operation. So will the Agency.’

Nothing new there, thought Bald. The Firm’s SOPs were basically a roll-call of the many devious and original ways by which they planned to fuck you in the arse. Bald rubbed his eyes but the shimmering refused to go away. His iPhone trilled in his jeans pocket. He dug it out. Lena was calling. He tapped the ‘Decline’ tab. I shouldn’t be here right now, he thought. I should be in a hotel banging the finest piece of Russian arse the world has ever seen. His mind ran through all the good shit that had happened to him since Serbia. The women. The job. The fucking money. The big house in Guildford. Lena. Cave was out of his fucking mind if he thought he would want to risk going back into active service.

He thought, too, about the migraines. It wouldn’t just be a risk doing the job. It’d be a fucking disaster. That was why he’d never considered himself for the contract to begin with. He thought about sharing his thoughts with Cave, but the MI6 man was waffling away on the Torch.

‘Yes . . . No . . . Yes. Of course.’

They were fast approaching the Kent coast. The land had flattened out. Cave killed the call.

Bald wasn’t prepared to deal with this crap any longer. He wanted out. He tapped the driver’s headrest and said, ‘Stop the car.’

Cave snorted, half amused, half annoyed. ‘Don’t you want to hear my proposal?’

‘Shove it up your crack. I’ve got a good job. A good fucking life. I don’t need this shit. Get some other cunt to do it.’

With that Bald sunk into his seat and rooted around in his jeans pocket. He pulled out a small plastic container, unscrewed the lid and popped three white tablets into his mouth.

‘On the happy pills now, are we, John Boy?’

‘These fucking headaches—’

Cave snatched the container from Bald and read out the word ‘Sarotex’. He tossed it back into Bald’s lap. ‘For God’s sake. You’re on anti-depressants now?’

‘It’s for my head,’ said Bald.

‘That’s the stuff they prescribe for the boys coming back from Afghanistan with PTSD.’ Cave was quiet for a moment. Bald faced forward but he could feel the wanker’s eyes burning holes in him. ‘Lance-Elsing are willing to cough up $5 million for this job.’

Bald said, ‘It’s worth a lot more to the Firm.’

‘You want to concentrate on getting your act together. You can’t cock this one up.’

‘I told you: get someone else to do it.’

‘There is no one else.’

Bald soothed his forehead. He prayed for the amitriptyline to kick in super-fast. Bald was a tough guy, he had grit, had balls, but when the migraines came on he wanted nothing more than to put a bullet between his eyes.

‘Five million,’ repeated Cave. ‘That’ll set you up for life. You can go and live in a chalet in the Alps, drink whiskey and eat deep-fried kebabs, or whatever it is you people do.’

Bald said nothing.

Cave dropped his voice. His eyes were smiling. ‘But know this. You walk away and I make one phone call. That’s all it takes. One phone call and your life becomes a living nightmare.’

Bald’s mouth was suddenly very dry.

‘You remember Rio, don’t you, John?’ Cave went on. ‘I’m sure the Brazilian authorities would love to talk to you about the cops you killed and the drugs you smuggled out.’

Cave now turned to face Bald. His demeanour had changed. His voice was threatening.

‘If you won’t cooperate with us, I’ll put you on the next flight to Brazil. The police will have you wearing steel bracelets before you put a foot on the tarmac. They’ll try you for murder, John Boy. They’ll send you to a prison where the local gangs will ride a train up your arse so hard their dicks will be tickling the back of your throat.’

Bile rose up to Bald’s mouth. He could taste it. It was bitter and lumpy. He swallowed it back down, breathed in air-conned air and glared at Cave. ‘I do this one job, we’re quits?’

Cave smiled broadly at Bald. ‘Good man.’

A road sign indicated they were five miles north of New Romney. The sky had been stripped bare of clouds. In its place was a low mist that rippled and swirled as it blew in from the sea, dousing the fields and the trees.

‘Almost there.’

‘Almost where?’ asked Bald.

‘Lydd Airport.’

The mist thickened. Irrigation dykes tapered away either side of the road, hemmed in by slanting fence posts. Bald caught sight of the GPS navigator on the dash. They were racing south down Swamp Road. The navigator reckoned 1.2 miles to their destination. Swamp Road fed into Dennes Lane and the road shrunk to country lane. It was bumpy as fuck and at the speed they were travelling the car jerked and rattled, Bald’s guts doing somersaults. The words of his old mucker Dave Hands came back to him. Hands had always been a cunt but he was on the money when it came to dealing with Whitehall. However smart you are or think you are, he’d said to John, the Firm will fuck you.

But they’ll fuck you so gently you won’t even notice it.

Cave checked his Torch again. Without looking at Bald he said, ‘There’s a private Gulfstream jet waiting for you. It’ll fly you to Mexico City. From there you’ll have to make your own way across the border.’

Bald asked, ‘Why Mexico?’

‘We can’t send you on a flight directly to the US. Even with the Agency’s help, there’s no way of sneaking you in without your name and fingerprints being recorded.’

Bald shook his head vigorously. ‘No fucking way. I can’t just get on a flight and bug out of here. I’ve got business to take care of.’ Lena’s arse flashed into his mind.

Cave shrugged. ‘Tough luck, John Boy. The sleeper is planning to act in three days. That gives us a window of seventy-two hours to stop him.’

Cave paused to consult his watch. He was wearing a Cartier – eighteen carats of gold that had Bald wondering how much a prick like him banked each month.

‘I have meetings—’

‘I’m afraid you don’t,’ Cave said. ‘As of midnight you’re officially on the Missing Persons list. Suspected of falling off the Embankment Bridge along with another ex-Regiment bad-luck story, Joseph James Gardner. Media reports will suggest you were both drunk. They’ll write it up as the tragic end to two glorious military careers.’

Bald felt his face blaze up.

‘Don’t bother playing innocent,’ Cave said. ‘I saw what happened on the bridge. I was watching you the whole time.’

The heat spread down Bald’s neck. Tiny sparks singed each hair on his forearms. ‘But if you saw me, why didn’t you do anything to stop me?’

‘One less problem to take care of. Gardner was a bundle of trouble. You did us a favour there.’

Sweat trickled down the nape of Bald’s neck. The Lexus was churning out frosted air that made the sweat unpleasantly cold. They were east of Lydd now. The medication was taking effect. A fog was settling behind Bald’s eyes and making him feel drowsy. The palpitation in his hands and chest was petering out. He gazed out of his window. Nearly one o’clock in the morning and the moon was on full blast, coating a single aircraft hangar and a half-dozen surrounding structures in a sticky luminescence. Lydd Airport.

The runway was lit up. Everything else was encased in darkness. It wasn’t hard to spot the Gulfstream poised at the near end of the runway. Sea mist ghosted around the perimeter of the airport. Take a good look, said the voice in the back of Bald’s head. This might be the last time you see Britain for a while.

The driver slowed the Lexus to a fast walk. Its headlights danced across the body of the Gulfstream.

‘Everything’s ready, Johnny. Are you?’

‘What do you fucking think?’

A smile crawled up Cave’s right cheek. ‘Cheer up, man. You might even enjoy it.’

The Lexus slowed to a halt at the edge of the runway fifty metres from the Gulfstream. Bald had to admit, the jet looked the business.

‘You’re looking at a G450,’ said Cave. ‘The best long-range business jet money can buy. Too good for you.’

The driver debussed, paraded around to Cave’s side and opened the passenger door for him. Bald was left to clamber out himself. A smell of diesel and salt infiltrated his nostrils. He allowed himself a grim thought: at least the Firm are sending you off to your death in style. Shutting out further thoughts, he checked his surroundings. There were no other cars or people in sight. And that gave Bald an idea as Cave led the way towards the Gulfstream.

The jet filled their panorama. Bald could make out the signature oval windows and the ‘G450’ logo etched in stylish italics down the length of the tail.

‘Hurry it up,’ Cave said to Bald. ‘Chop, chop.’

But Bald started pacing away from the Gulfstream.

‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’ Cave shouted after him.

‘I’m fucking leaving.’

Bald quickened his stride, heading for the blackness encircling the runway. He had no idea how he’d get back to London tonight. He hadn’t thought that far ahead. All he knew was he wanted to get as far away from Cave and the Firm as fucking possible. No, he wasn’t going to blow everything he had. Not even for five million quid.

‘You can’t leave!’ Cave called after him.

I just have, mate, thought Bald.

He made it a few paces further when a cold circle against his nape made him freeze.

An unfamiliar voice said, ‘Take one more step and I’ll kill you.’

Bald was halfway through wondering who the fuck had shoved a gun into his neck when half a dozen figures emerged from the dark fields into the hot light of the runway. They were identically dressed in dark-grey suits, white shirts and black ties. They were identically armed too. Each guy packed a Sig Sauer P229 semi-automatic pistol.

The Firm’s foot soldiers, realised Bald. He heard the click-clack of shoes on tarmac. The footsteps terminated immediately to his six o’clock.

‘You really thought it would be that easy?’ Cave sounded amused. ‘John, the fact is you will do this job. Now get on the bloody plane. We’re behind schedule.’

Bald figured it would be pointless to try to run. The foot soldiers would mow him down before he reached safe ground. He turned around and warily followed Cave towards the Gulfstream. By the time Bald reached the top of the airstairs he was struggling for breath. He stepped through the primary entrance door and found himself in the main cabin area. A smell of fresh leather hit him, walnutty and textured. He smelled something else too, something shitty, rank. He couldn’t place it. He looked up and down the cabin. On his left was the starboard galley with a storage area stacked with cutlery and plates, a water-filter system and a coffee percolator.

Then Bald looked to his right at the main cabin area and dry-heaved.

eighteen

San Antonio, Texas, USA. 1544 hours.

The Ruby Ridge indoor gun range announced itself with a ranch-style billboard in the shape of a cowboy hat, off the I-10 near Sunny Slope on the east side of town. ‘GUNS & OUTDOOR. KIDS WELCOME,’ the billboard promised. Hauser parked his GMC Yukon Denali in the gravel parking lot and retrieved an orange Pelican box from the passenger seat. It was forty degrees in the open and twenty-two in the air-conned bliss of the Ruby Ridge Armory and Survival Store. The store manager, a guy with a rustbelt beard and a beer gut with its own gravitational pull, greeted Hauser as he walked up to the counter. There was an impressive array of Glocks and Sig Sauers on display in the counter and a stuffed moose head framed on the wall behind the manager. The guy was forty or thereabouts. All that fat, it was hard to tell.

‘I’ll take a booth,’ said Hauser.

‘Sign here,’ the manager said, gesturing to a pad of blank forms next to a stack of paperbacks entitled The Essential Texas State Gun Law Handbook. Hauser wrote down a false name, address and social security number.

‘And here.’

Hauser ticked a box declaring that he was not mentally ill. With the State of Texas satisfied that he wasn’t going to randomly kill anybody, Hauser was free to spend a half-hour on the range.

‘See anything you like?’ The manager waved a hand at the Sigs and Glocks. ‘Got a special on the Rugers at the moment, if you’re looking.’

‘I’m not.’

Hauser patted his Pelican box.

‘Brought my own piece.’

‘Change your mind, let me know,’ said the manager, his voice the colour of mild disappointment. He handed Hauser a pair of protective glasses and earmuffs. Hauser strapped on the glasses but didn’t bother with the muffs. He lugged the Pelican box down an egress corridor to an airlocked door at the end. Limped into the gun range.

The air stank of lead. The newer ranges had sophisticated ventilation systems that blew smoke and lead particles down the range to the sloped bank. Not here. Hauser could feel a greasy film of lead powder forming on his face and neck. He chose the second booth from the end. On his right a forty-something woman with a shock of peroxide-blonde hair was popping rounds out of a ridiculously big revolver. Hauser couldn’t make out the brand.

Three rednecks were having themselves a whale of a time at the booth to his left. They were all wearing a uniform straight out of the Ranger Joe’s catalogue. The youngest was decked out in an ACU pattern T-shirt and desert-brown fatigues. With his flat-top crewcut and bowling-ball biceps he looked like a lifesize Marine Corps action figure. The second guy was thin as a strip of beef jerky, with a face that looked like it had been marinated in Jim Beam. His ponytail poked out like a skunk’s tail from underneath his Texas Rangers baseball cap.

The two dumbfucks looked on approvingly as the third guy unloaded a clip from a Ruger SR40 semi-automatic. Emptying the last round at the paper target hoisted fifteen metres ahead of him, the guy lowered the firearm as Rangers hit the red button on the wall mount and the target whirred back towards the booth.

Marine Corps plucked the target off the clips. ‘Hell of a punch that point-forty packs. I mean, look at this shit, Rudy.’ Marine Corps was poking his pinkie through one of the bullet holes ripped through the target. Wiggled it about like a little dick.

Rudy, the shooter, laid the Ruger flat on the booth table and examined the hits for himself. He was wearing digi-cam combats and a pair of weathered combat boots. A black T-shirt hung down over his moobs with the words ‘OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM VETERAN’ humped over his neat little beer belly. Hauser figured the closest this guy had got to Iraq was looking it up on fucking Google Earth.

Rudy rubbed his grizzly-bear jaw and nodded at the target.

‘Like I told you, dummy. You put Hector and his fajita-eating buddies down with one of these babies, and he ain’t for getting up. And you know what you call a dead beaner?’

‘One step in the right direction.’

‘One step in the right direction,’ Rudy concurred.

Marine Corps, Rudy and Rangers snickered like three schoolkids who’d just discovered a hole in the wall of the girls’ changing room.

‘Not bad,’ Hauser said.

Rudy pulled the plug on his laughter. Rangers and Marine Corps fell into line and did their best to look severely pissed. Rudy turned around. Slowly, as if giving his rage time to properly boil up inside of him. Hauser whistled ‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home’ as he busied himself with springing open the Pelican box.

Rudy said, ‘What did you say, friend?’

‘I meant what I said. You’re not a bad shot. But you’re not a good one either.’

Rudy pointed a finger at a spot between Hauser’s eyes and said, ‘And who the fuck are you?’

‘Someone who shoots better than you.’

Rudy blazed up like petrol. He shaped clumsily to swing a punch at Hauser but Marine Corps and Rangers wisely grabbed hold of him and held him back. Rudy looked like he was shitting out a cannonball. Hauser removed the components of his gun from its box and laid them on his booth table. The weapon’s smooth polymer surface had four light-grey buttons dotted above the trigger mechanism and an anti-friction layer tapering at both ends of the grip. In the middle of the grip was a seal encircling a regal ‘N’ and ‘F’. Running down the side of the barrel were the engraved words ‘FN HERSTAL BELGIUM’.

‘An FN Five-Seven,’ said Rudy, folding his arms across his chest. ‘Big fucking deal. Those things have been on the market for years.’

‘The civilian version, sure,’ said Hauser. ‘But not this model.’

Now Hauser removed a box of ammo from the Pelican box and placed it on the table in clear view of the rednecks. He began thumbing rounds into the clip. Each cartridge was roughly the height of two quarters and bottlenecked at the tip like a spear. Rudy swapped glances with Marine Corps and Rangers.

‘This is a 5.7x28mm FN round. Notice the lack of the hollow point on top of the round. As I’m sure you know, you can’t buy these rounds commercially.’

Rudy said, ‘I hear them things can punch a hole through forty bulletproof vests.’

Hauser said, ‘You heard right.’

He loaded the last cartridge into the clip, then slid the clip into the pistol grip. Now he fastened a red-mil-dot laser sight to the underside of the barrel and punched the numbers ‘5’ and ‘0’ into the target range-setter. The fresh bullseye target whirred away and came to a halt a few metres short of the rear bank.

Rudy was about to say something but Hauser discharged the first round from the chamber. Flames spewed out of the muzzle. The recoil was barely noticeable. With some guns the recoil was so bad it was like wrestling the hind legs of a dog. But not the Five-Seven. Hauser kept his grip steady and his support firm and casually emptied all twenty rounds of 5.7x28mm ammo. When he was done he palmed the red button on the controls. The target zipped back to the booth. Hauser left it clipped to the rail while he removed the laser sight and ejected the spent clip. He could feel the rednecks closing ranks around him.

‘Holy shit,’ said Rangers. ‘That’s some fucking shooting.’

Twenty holes were crowded around the bullseye in the centre of the target. Every single bullet had struck within a quarter of an inch of the bullseye.

Rudy nodded with his bottom lip. Grudging acknowledgement of Hauser’s shooting skills. He looked at him in a different light. ‘You know, a man who can shoot shouldn’t let his talent go to waste. He ought to put it to good use.’

Hauser continued packing his Five-Seven into the Pelican box.

‘Lemme ask you a question,’ said Rudy.

‘Ask,’ said Hauser.

‘Do you love America?’

Hauser’s eyes pinballed from Rudy to Marine Corps to Rangers. All three were staring at him. ‘That depends,’ he said.

‘On what?’

‘Which part you’re asking me about.’

‘How about I’m asking you about the whole damn thing?’

‘I like free speech and low taxes. I like my fuel cheap,’ Hauser said. ‘But I don’t much care for big government. Or Arab-loving, pro-lifer faggots. And I sure as hell don’t like having a president who’s not even American.’

‘Fuckin’ A.’ This from Marine Corps.

Hauser gently clipped the Pelican box shut while Rudy broke out into a full-on smile that fractured his skin, like a dried-out riverbed. He gave Hauser an ironclad handshake. ‘Name’s Rudy.’

‘Greg Tilson,’ said Hauser.

‘Pleasure, Greg.’ Rudy patted Hauser on the back like they were friends from way back in the day. ‘I knew from the moment I saw you. I thought, now there’s a guy who knows what’s really going on in this country of ours.’

Hauser looked down the booths, waited for a lull in the gunfire and dropped his voice. ‘I hear you boys like to go out of a night. Stopping those wetto motherfuckers from crossing the border.’

Rudy grinned and revealed a set of teeth that were mostly coffee-brown and bent except for one silver tooth on the upper ridge. ‘Well, someone’s got to stop those sneaky sons of bitches coming over here—’

‘Taking our jobs—’ said Hauser.

‘And our women—’ said Rangers.

‘Freeloading off honest taxpayers,’ said Marine Corps.

‘Know what?’ said Rudy, slinging a bare arm around Hauser’s shoulders. It was coated in sweat and Hauser could feel it sticky and cold against his neck. ‘We’re heading down to the border tonight. Word is, it’s gonna be a big crossing tonight. I’m talking beaners coming out of your frigging asshole. Why don’t you come along? Have some real-life target practice for a change.’

Hauser smiled.

‘I’d love to,’ he said.

eleven

0838 hours.

It was a million degrees in the bar and the place stank worse than the changing room at Bald’s gym. Some kind of shit local music was playing. Loads of fucking banjos and shouting. Brightly coloured murals covered the walls like graffiti. Bald half-expected the dozen locals at the bar to turn around in unison and draw their weapons, Western-style. But they didn’t. They chain-smoked Marlboro Reds, motioned for more shots of pulque and minded their own fucking business.

Bald made a beeline for a table near to the bar. He waved two fingers at the drowsy bartender, indicating he wanted a couple of shots of pulque, and pulled up a chair. Antonia was standing behind hers, as if waiting for Bald to pull it out for her. But Bald wasn’t programmed that way. He let her tuck herself in.

‘I’ll have a Diet Coke,’ she said.

‘Too late,’ Bald replied. ‘I already ordered.’

The bartender dumped two shots of pulque in front of them. The pulque was creamy and looked like dog sperm. Bald knocked his back in one swig. Spicy and hot in the back of his throat, it settled in his stomach like battery acid. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Antonia didn’t touch her drink. She stared at it like it was, in fact, dog sperm.

‘Go on, lass. Drink up.’

‘I’m not thirsty.’

Bald shrugged and said, ‘What did Cave tell you about me? Apart from the fact that I’m a legend in the sack?’

Antonia pushed her drink away. ‘He said that you used to be in Special Forces. One of the best, and one of the worst. That the other guys respected you but steered clear, because they couldn’t trust you an inch. He also said that you’re a bitter drunk living in the past and I should keep a close eye on you in case—’

Four chubby Mexicans at the bar laughed out loud at something. Antonia looked over her shoulder at them. ‘In case what?’ Bald said.

‘Daniel said you’re a combustible Scot,’ Antonia said, speaking as if reading from an autocue, ‘who’s prone to violent tendencies, frequently expresses his anger with his fists and has a serious dependency on cocaine.’

‘I agree with everything except the bitter part.’

Antonia didn’t laugh. She didn’t smile. Her lips were so straight you could paint road lines with them, and Bald was thinking the same thing he thought about every English bird. That she’d look a hell of a lot sexier if she didn’t have a face like the. . .