Red Notice

9

As Gavin gave the ‘Go’, Tom broke cover. Ignoring the prone figure of the blonde, he ran towards White, then dropped to one knee and aimed his ARWEN baton gun at the upper windows of the house.

He pumped two rounds into each of the unshuttered windows. As they smashed through the glass each circular disc ruptured and spun into the rooms, blinding anyone within range.

Tom reloaded and switched to the lower windows, but this time, though the glass panes disintegrated, the fine CN irritant billowed outside the building. He sprinted through the gas, flattened himself against the wall and whipped out a telescoping steel rod. As he cleared the remaining glass and peeled back the shredded curtains, instead of looking into a room, he found himself facing a concrete wall.

There was the thud of another detonation outside on Red as more charges blew apart the steel security gates set into the wall. Two black Range Rovers ploughed through the garden, churning up the immaculate lawns and passing on either side of the rose pergola where the Russian blonde still lay, immobilized and unconscious. Aluminium ladders were fixed to the roofs of the cars and Red Three and Four stood on the bumpers and running boards as they roared towards the house, eyes fixed on the windows Tom had already destroyed.

An X-ray appeared at one, threw up his AK-47 and kicked off a three-round burst. One of the Blue team dropped off the Range Rover and hit the grass, nursing a ragged hole in his leg.

Before the guard could fire again Keenan, still perched in the crook of the tree, filled his sight with the target’s head, took up first pressure, aimed at the base of his nose, exhaled a long breath that was more like a sigh, and squeezed the trigger. Firing a subsonic round, his sniper rifle hardly made a sound.

‘Sierra One,’ Keenan said. ‘I had to take the shot.’

Gavin had watched the 7.62mm round make contact on the monitor and knew it had been the right decision. ‘Alpha, roger that.’

The Range Rovers slewed to a halt in front of the house as the two Blue team medics dragged the injured man into cover. A moment later the ladders clanged against the walls next to the shuttered windows and the assault teams clambered up them to make entry into the CN-filled rooms.

Tom and Blue Five were ahead of them, sweeping through the downstairs rooms. Domestic servants, many still incapacitated and in shock after the detonations on White and Red, were curled up on the floor in pain as the CN did its job.

Jockey and his team, Blue One, had made the second explosive entry. They met no resistance as they moved from room to room, but it was only when he opened a door that should have led to the hall that he found out why. The Scotsman’s face registered neither surprise nor alarm: like the rest of the team he was now on auto-pilot. The reason the Regiment were so good at assaulting buildings was because they trained every single day. Jockey got on the net. ‘More concrete, they’ve blocked us in sectors.’