Burning Angels

Those in the bow opened fire, unleashing a torrent of rounds towards the speeding RIB. Dale began to throw the craft into a series of tight random turns, in an effort to confuse the shooters, but they were running out of time and options.

Jaeger and Narov held their aim but still didn’t open fire. The Sunseeker thundered closer. Rounds skipped and juddered off the surface of the ocean to either side of the speeding RIB.

Jaeger took a momentary glance behind him. Simon Bello was curled up in the footwell, shaking, his eyes rolling with fear.

Jaeger squeezed off a short burst that peppered the Sunseeker’s hull. But it seemed to have no effect on the speeding craft. He forced himself to calm his nerves and concentrated on his breathing, blocking out all other thoughts. He glanced at Narov, and together they unleashed a second burst.

Jaeger saw a round strike one of the figures in the Sunseeker’s bow compartment. The guy slumped forward over his weapon. As Jaeger watched, the other gunman lifted him up effortlessly and proceeded to throw him overboard.

It was an utterly ruthless move, and a chilling thing to have done.

The gunman had dumped the body in the sea using the strength in his massive arms and shoulders. For a moment Jaeger’s mind flipped back to a moment in his past: the gunman’s form and bulk and his movements seemed somehow chillingly familiar.

And then it hit him. The night of the attack. The night of his wife and child’s abduction. The massive, hulking form and the hateful tones behind the gas mask. That man and this were one and the same.

The figure in the bow of the Sunseeker was Steve Jones, the guy who’d very nearly managed to kill Jaeger during SAS selection.

The guy Jaeger suddenly knew with an instinctive realisation was the kidnapper of his wife and child.

90

Jaeger reached down to the kid — the precious kid — lying flat in the bottom of the RIB, where he was shielded from the worst of the fire. Simon Chucks Bello couldn’t see a thing down there, and Jaeger didn’t doubt how much he was suffering, both physically and mentally. He’d heard him puke once already.

‘Hang on in there, hero!’ he yelled at the boy, flashing him a bracing smile. ‘I’m not letting you die, I promise!’

Still the Sunseeker bore down fast. It was no more than 150 metres to their stern, and it was only the rough ocean swell that was keeping the RIB shielded from its fire.

But that wouldn’t last.

Any closer, and the rounds unleashed by Jones and his cohorts were bound to find their mark. Worse still, Jaeger was running dangerously low on ammo.

He and Narov had each emptied six mags, so some 240 rounds in all. It sounded like a lot, but not when trying to repulse an assault by a score of gunmen on a speeding pursuit boat, using two short-range weapons.

It was only a matter of time before the RIB took a catastrophic hit.

Jaeger was tempted to grab the Thuraya and call Miles, screaming for the Taranis strike. But he knew he couldn’t afford to drop his guard, or relax his aim. As soon as the Sunseeker hove into view again, they needed to hit it doubly hard and accurately.

Moments later, the sleek motorboat reappeared, its powerful form slicing across their wake. Jaeger and Narov traded savage fire with fire. They saw the unmistakable figure of Jones raise himself and unleash a long burst on automatic. The rounds cut a chasm through the sea, one that reached out directly for the RIB. No doubt about it, Jones was a crack shot, and this burst was going to find them.

And then, at the very last moment, Dale powered the craft over the crest of a swell and the RIB dropped out of view, the fire ripping apart the air above their heads.

The howl of the Sunseeker’s massive engines was audible now. Jaeger tensed over his weapon, scanning the horizon for where the boat would make its next move.

It was then that he heard it. A stupendous noise — an earth-shattering, thunderous roar — filled the air, as if a deep-ocean earthquake was ripping apart the sea floor. It reverberated through the skies, drowning out all other sounds.

Moments later, a dart-like form tore out of the heavens, its single Rolls-Royce Adour turbofan jet engine powering it along at a punishing 800 m.p.h. It streaked above them in a shallow dive, twisting this way and that as the drone operator corrected the Taranis’s flight path to keep it on course with its target.

Jaeger heard deafening gunfire erupt from the direction of the Sunseeker, as those in the pursuit boat tried to blast the drone out of the skies. He pinned Jones in the sights of his MP7, squeezing off short aimed bursts, as his arch-enemy unleashed savage fire in return.

Beside him Narov was likewise eking out the last of her bullets.

But it was then that Jaeger sensed it.