Burning Angels

The old man shrugged his shoulders. ‘We feel it is somewhat fitting. There is a certain delicious irony about it all. And you know something: if there is one nation that will never forget the horrors of the war, it is Germany. They are driven and empowered by their guilt — still, to this day.’

‘I guess I’ve never really thought about it,’ Jaeger confessed.

‘Well perhaps you should,’ the old man chided, gently. ‘If we are safe anywhere, we are perhaps most safe hiding in a former Nazi bunker in Germany, where all of this began. But… I get ahead of myself. These are discussions best to be had when the rest of your team is here.’

Jaeger was shown to his sparse room. He’d eaten on the flight, and in truth he was dog-tired. After the whirlwind of the past three weeks — the Cuban mission, the edit suite bombing, and now mustering his team — he was looking forward to a long sleep secreted deep below ground.

Peter Miles bade him goodnight. Once the massive steel door had swung shut, Jaeger became aware of a deafening silence. This far underground, and encased in several feet of reinforced concrete, not the slightest sound could be heard.

It felt utterly unearthly.

He lay down and focused on his breathing. It was a trick he’d learned during his time in the military. A deep breath in, hold it for several seconds, followed by a long breath out again. Repeat. Focus on the act of breathing, and all other worries would dissolve from your mind.

His last conscious thought was that, lying here beneath the ground and in utter darkness, it felt as if he had been consigned to his own grave.

But he was exhausted, and it wasn’t long before he drifted into a deep sleep.

16

‘OUT! GET OUT! OUT!’ a voice screamed. ‘OUT! BASTARD MOVE!’

Jaeger felt the vehicle’s door being ripped open as a horde of dark figures wearing balaclavas swarmed around, weapons held at the ready. Hands reached in and dragged him out violently, as Peter Miles was likewise hauled from the driver’s side.

After a solid fourteen hours’ sleep, Jaeger had joined Miles on a ride to the airport, to collect two of the others from his team. But as they’d wound their way along the narrow forest track leading out of Falkenhagen, they’d found their way blocked by a fallen tree. Miles had slowed to a halt, clearly suspecting nothing. Moments later, a crowd of balaclava-clad gunmen had swarmed out of the trees.

Jaeger was thrown to the ground, his face forced into the sodden dirt.

‘KEEP DOWN! FUCKING DOWN!’

He felt powerful arms pinioning him. His face was driven so hard into the earth that he couldn’t breathe. As he choked and spluttered on the smell of rot and decay, he was gripped by a rising sense of panic.

They were suffocating him.

He tried to lift his head to grab a gasp of air, but a series of savage kicks and punches rained down.

‘GET DOWN!’ the voice screamed. ‘Get your ugly, shitty face down into the dirt!’

Jaeger tried to break away, flailing at his attackers and screaming curses. All it earned him was a fusillade of vicious blows, this time from a rifle butt. As he went down under the beating, he felt his hands being wrenched violently backwards, as if his arms were about to be ripped out of their sockets, and then his wrists were lashed vice-tight with gaffer tape.

The next moment the forest chill was rent by gunshots. Bang! Bang! Bang! Wild shots, echoing deafeningly amongst the shadows beneath the thick cover. Shots that made Jaeger’s heart skip a beat.

This is bad. Real bad.

He managed to force his head up enough to grab a quick peek. He saw that Peter Miles had managed to make a break for it and was weaving through the trees.

More shots were unleashed. Jaeger saw Miles falter and stumble, and then he tumbled on to his front and lay still. One of the gunmen rushed across to him. He levelled a pistol at the fallen man, pulling the trigger three times in quick succession.

Jaeger felt himself shaking. They’d executed Peter Miles — that gentle old man — in cold blood. Who in the name of God was behind this?

An instant later, someone grabbed Jaeger’s hair and yanked his head backwards. Before he could say a word, he felt a strip of gaffer tape being slapped across his mouth, then a black cloth bag was dragged over his head and tied around his neck.

Everything went very dark.

Stumbling blindly, Jaeger was yanked to his feet and propelled forward helter-skelter through the woodland. He tripped over a fallen branch and fell hard.

Wild screams: ‘GET UP! UP! UP!’

He was dragged onwards across a patch of boggy ground, the smell of rotten leaf matter assailing his senses. The frantic forced march went on and on, until Jaeger felt totally disorientated. Finally he detected a new noise up ahead: the rhythmic throb of an engine. They were taking him to some kind of vehicle. Through the bag he could just make out two bright spots piercing the thick shadows.

Headlamps.