Burning Angels

A voice called out from a room up ahead. The words sounded mocking. They were followed by laughter. There was still no sign of any evident alarm. The caller had to figure that the guy was drunk and had dropped the bottles accidentally.

A red smear slithered down the wall, tracing the dead man’s trajectory to the floor. He had collapsed slowly, folding in on himself with a hollow, wet whump.

Twelve, the voice in Jaeger’s head breathed. By rights, that should leave only one now — the Lebanese Mr Big. Konig had shown them a photo of the guy and it was seared into Jaeger’s mind.

‘Moving in to take Beirut,’ he whispered.

They’d kept the language for the assault simple-stupid. Their only codeword was for their target, and for that they’d chosen the name of the Lebanese capital city.

‘Thirty seconds out,’ Narov replied, her breath coming in heaving gasps as she sprinted for the entranceway.

For an instant Jaeger was tempted to wait for her. Two brains — two gun barrels — were always better than one. But every second was precious now. Their objective was to wipe out this gang and terminate their operation.

The key thing now was to cut the head off the snake.

56

Jaeger paused for a second, slipping the part-used mag off the sniper rifle and clicking a fresh one into place — just in case.

As he moved forward, he heard the muffled sound of a TV blaring out from his right front. He caught the odd word of commentary in English. Football. A Premier League match. Had to be. In that room would be the three he had shot through the wall. He made a mental note to get Narov to check that they were all dead.

He crept towards the half-open doorway ahead of him, stopping a pace back from it. Muted voices came from inside. A conversation. What sounded like haggling, in English. More than just the Lebanese Mr Big in there, that was for sure. He raised his right leg and booted the door fully open.

In the adrenalin-fuelled, hyped intensity of combat, time seemed to slow to a prehistoric pace, and a second could last a lifetime.

Jaeger’s eyes swept the room, taking in the key aspects in a microsecond.

Four figures, two seated at a table.

One, on his far right, was the Lebanese dealer. His wrist dripped a gold Rolex. His bulging belly oozed a lifetime’s overindulgence. He was dressed in a khaki designer safari suit, though Jaeger doubted it had ever seen much of the real bush.

Opposite him was a black guy in a cheap-looking collared shirt, grey slacks and black business shoes. Jaeger figured he had to be the brains behind the poaching operation.

But standing against the window facing Jaeger was the main threat: two seriously tooled-up, mean-looking individuals. Seasoned poachers — elephant and rhino killers — no doubt.

One had a belt of machine-gun ammo slung around his torso, Rambo style. In his hands he cradled the distinctive form of a PKM — the Russian equivalent of the British general-purpose machine gun. Perfect for cutting down elephants out on the wide-open plains, but not a great choice of weaponry for close-quarters combat.

The second figure held an RPG7 — the archetypal Russian-made rocket launcher. Great for blowing up vehicles, or blasting a helicopter out of the sky. Not good for stopping Will Jaeger in the close confines of a cramped room.

Part of the reason for the lack of space in here was the ivory piled in one corner. Dozens of massive tusks, each ending in a jagged, bloodied rosette where the poachers had hacked them off the animals they had slaughtered.

Fuzzt! Fuzzt!

Jaeger nailed the tooled-up poachers with head shots, right between the eyes. As they fell, he riddled them with six further rounds, three to each torso — the shots driven as much by rage as by any desire to ensure they were dead.

He caught a flash of movement as the big Lebanese went for a gun. Fuzzt!

A scream rent the room as Jaeger pumped a bullet into the fat man’s gun hand, blowing a jagged hole through his palm. Then he pirouetted and nailed the African in his sights, putting a bullet through his hand too, at close to point-blank range.

That hand had been scrabbling about on the table, trying to gather up and hide a pile of US dollar notes, which were now getting soaked with his blood.

‘Have Beirut. Repeat: have Beirut,’ Jaeger reported to Narov. ‘All hostiles down, but check room second on right with TV. Three hostiles — check dead.’

‘Got it. Moving into corridor now.’

‘Once you’re done, secure building’s entryway. In case we missed any or they called for reinforcements.’

Jaeger stared down his gun barrel at two faces wide-eyed with shock and fear. Keeping his trigger finger at the ready and holding the Thread Cutter one-handed, he reached behind him with the other and grabbed his pistol, bringing it forward. He let the Thread Cutter drop on to his front, suspended on its sling, then brought the P228 into the aim. He needed one hand free for what was coming.