Burning Angels

Jaeger came to his feet, keeping low, his pistol in the aim. All around him, bullets were ricocheting off the slick concrete of the roof. Either he dealt with this pronto, or he was a dead man.

He took aim on the muzzle flash, and squeezed off three rounds in quick succession: pzzzt, pzzzt, pzzzt! In this game it was all about being able to unleash rapid but deadly accurate fire.

This was life and death in the kill zone. Here, the dividing line was measured in fractions of an inch and milliseconds. And Jaeger’s aim had been that much faster and better.

He moved position and went into a crouch, scanning all around him. As Narov and Raff leapt out of the stairwell to either side of him, Jaeger crept forward, perfectly balanced on the balls of his feet, a cat stalking its prey. He swept the heap of broken furniture with his weapon. More of the enemy were hiding there, he just knew it.

All of a sudden a figure broke cover and began to run. Jaeger pinned the runner in his sights, but as he tensed to fire, his finger bone-white on the trigger, he realised it was a woman; a dark-haired woman. Leticia Santos, it had to be!

He saw a second figure sprint after her, the silhouette of a pistol gripped in his hand. It was her captor and would-be killer, but they were too close for Jaeger to open fire.

‘Drop the gun!’ he snarled. ‘Drop the gun!’

The FM54 mask had an inbuilt voice-projection system, which acted like a megaphone, making his words sound weirdly metallic and robotic.

‘Drop your weapon!’

In response the gunman snaked a powerful arm around the woman’s neck, forcing her towards the edge of the roof. Jaeger advanced, keeping them covered.

In his respirator and suit he looked twice as large as normal. He figured Leticia would have little idea who was behind the mask, and his steely, voice-projected tones would be equally unrecognisable.

Was he friend or foe?

She would have no way of telling.

She took a fearful step backwards, the bad guy fighting to keep her under control. The edge of the roof was right at their backs. There was nowhere to retreat or to run.

‘Drop your weapon!’ Jaeger repeated. ‘Drop the bloody gun!’

He held the SIG before him double-handed and tight to his body: the silencer tended to force the gases from the barrel back into the shooter’s face, so it was crucial to keep as firm a stance as possible in order to dampen the kickback. He had the bad guy pinned in his sights, the pistol’s hammer was back and his index finger was on the trigger — yet still he couldn’t take the shot. In the faint light he couldn’t be certain of his aim, the bulky gloves making the shot doubly difficult.

The bad guy had his own pistol jammed in Leticia’s throat.

Stalemate.

Jaeger felt Narov move up on his shoulder. She too had her long-barrelled P228 in the aim. Her hands remained rock solid: steady and ice cool as always. She moved a step ahead of him, and he flicked his gaze across to her. No response. Not the hint of a reaction. She didn’t break eye contact with the iron sights of the SIG.

But there was something very different about her profile now.

Narov had ripped off her respirator, leaving it hanging on its straps, and slipped on a pair of AN/PVS-21 night vision goggles. They lit up her features with a fluorescent green alien glow, and she had also pulled off her gloves.

For a horrible moment Jaeger knew exactly what she was about to do.

He reached out a hand to try to stop her. He was too late.

Pzzzt, pzzzt, pzzzt!

Narov had pulled the trigger.

She’d taken the shot.

9

The standard military round for the 9mm P228 weighs in at 7.5 grams. The three subsonic bullets that Narov had unleashed were each two grams heavier. Travelling one hundred metres per second slower, it still took them only a fraction of an instant to bite.

They tore into the gunman’s face, driving him backwards and over the edge of the roof in a death plunge. It was incredible shooting. But as he fell, his arm remained locked around the woman’s neck.

With a piercing scream, both figures disappeared from view.

The drop from the roof was a good fifteen metres. Jaeger let out a savage curse. Bloody Narov!

He turned and raced for the trapdoor. As he thundered down the ladder, the Kolokol-1 swirled around his knees like a ghostly fog. He dropped down the last of the metal rungs, tore along the corridor, then hammered down the stairway, vaulting bodies as he went. He raced out through the shattered doorway, turned right and sprinted around the corner of the building, coming to a breathless halt where two figures lay in a crumpled heap.

The gunman had perished instantly as a result of three shots to the head, and it looked as if Leticia’s neck had been broken by the fall.

Jaeger cursed again. How could it all have gone so wrong so quickly? He knew the answer pretty much instantly: it was Narov’s trigger-happy, dumb-ass attitude.