Burning Angels

10

Jaeger turned left, taking the exit leading into London’s Harley Street, one of the city’s most exclusive districts. Three weeks had passed since their Cuban mission, and he was still stiff and in pain from the injuries he’d suffered in the villa, but his blackout had been only momentary: his mask had saved his head from worse injury.

It was Narov who had taken the real pounding. In the enclosed environment of the cellar, she’d had no option but to dive on the grenade. She’d used the gunman’s bulk, plus his body armour, to shield them from the blast, allowing Jaeger an instant to get Leticia into some cover.

Jaeger came to a halt opposite the Biowell Clinic, tucking his Triumph Tiger Explorer into one of the free parking places reserved for motorcycles. The Explorer was fast through the traffic, and he rarely failed to find a vacant parking space. It was one of the joys of navigating the city on two wheels. He shrugged off his battered Belstaff jacket, stripping down to his shirtsleeves.

Spring was in the air, the leafy plane trees that lined London’s streets bursting into leaf. If he had to be in the city – as opposed to the open wild of the countryside – this was about his favourite time of year to be here.

He’d just got news that Narov was conscious again and had eaten her first solid meal. In fact the surgeon had even mentioned the possibility of releasing her from his care sometime soon.

No doubt about it, Narov was tough.

Getting off that Cuban island had proved something of a challenge. Having come to after the grenade blast, Jaeger had stumbled to his feet and hoisted both Narov and Leticia Santos out of the cellar. Then he and Raff had carried the two women out of the gas-choked building, making their getaway through the villa grounds.

The assault had turned very noisy very fast, and Jaeger didn’t know who else on that island might have heard the gunfire. The alarm had most likely been raised, and their priority was to get the hell out of there. Vladimir and his lot would be left to explain it all to the Cuban authorities.

They’d headed for the nearby dock, where the kidnappers kept an ocean-going rigid inflatable boat. They’d loaded Narov and Santos aboard, fired up the RIB’s powerful twin 350-horsepower engines and headed east towards the British territory of the Turks and Caicos Islands, a 180-kilometre ride across the intervening stretch of ocean. Jaeger knew the governor of the islands personally, and he’d be expecting them.

Once they hit the open sea, Jaeger and Raff had stabilised Narov, stemming her bleeding. They’d laid her in the recovery position, making her and Leticia comfortable at the back of the RIB, cushioned by a pile of lifejackets.

That done, they’d gone about ditching the bulk of their kit. Weapons, CBRN suits, respirators, explosives, Kolokol-1 canisters – anything that might link back to the mission – had all been dumped overboard.

By the time they’d made landfall, there was little left to associate them with any military action. They had the appearance of four civilian pleasure-boaters who had run into a little trouble at sea.

They’d made sure they’d left no trail to follow back on the island, gathering up the used Kolokol-1 canisters. All that was left behind was a few dozen untraceable 9mm casings. Even their footprints had been masked by their CBRN overboots. There had been CCTV cameras in the villa, but once Raff had fried the electric circuitry, there had been no power. In any case, Jaeger would challenge anyone to ID him and his team through their respirators.

All that remained was their three parachutes, and even they should drift out to sea with the prevailing tides.

Any way Jaeger looked at it, they were clean.

As they’d powered across the calm, night-dark ocean, he’d spared a thought for the fact that he was still alive; that all his team were. He’d felt that warm buzz – that incredible rush – of entering a deadly kill zone and surviving.

Life never seemed more real than in the moments after it had very nearly been taken away from you.

Perhaps because of that, an image had come unbidden into his mind. Of Ruth – dark-haired, green-eyed, with fine, almost delicate features, an air of Celtic mystery about her; of Luke – eight years of age and even then the spitting image of his father.

Luke would be eleven now, his twelfth birthday just a few months away. He was a July baby, and they’d always managed to celebrate his birthday somewhere magical, for it fell midway through the summer holidays.

Jaeger spooled through the birthday memories in his mind: carrying a two-year-old Luke across the Giant’s Causeway on Ireland’s wild west coast; surfing off the Portuguese beaches when Luke was six; trekking through the snowy wastes of Mont Blanc when he was eight.

But after that there was just a sudden, empty blackness… a chilling loss that had lasted for three long years. Each of those missing birthdays had been sheer hell, and doubly so since whoever had kidnapped his wife and son had started to torture Jaeger remotely with images of their captivity.

He had been emailed photos of Ruth and Luke in chains, kneeling at the feet of their captors, their faces gaunt and haunted, their gazes red-rimmed and plagued by nightmares.

To know that they were alive and being held somewhere in utter, abject misery and despair had driven Jaeger to the edge of madness. It was only the hunt – the promise of their rescue – that had brought him back from the brink.

With Raff manning the RIB’s engines, Jaeger had navigated across the night-dark ocean using a portable GPS unit. With his free hand he’d unlaced one boot and removed something from beneath the insole.

He’d flashed his head-torch across it briefly, his eyes lingering on the faces that stared back at him from the tiny, battered photo – one that he carried on every mission, no matter what or where it might be. It had been taken on their last family holiday – a safari trip to Africa – and showed Ruth wrapped in a bright Kenyan sarong, a suntanned Luke in shorts and a SAVE THE RHINO T-shirt standing proudly at her side.

As the RIB had cut through the night sea, Jaeger had said a short prayer for them, wherever they might be. In his heart he knew they were still alive, and that the Cuban mission had brought him one step closer to finding them. While searching the villa, Raff had grabbed an iPad and some computer drives, stuffing them into his backpack. Jaeger hoped they might yield vital clues.

When the RIB had made landfall at the Turks and Caicos capital, Cockburn Town, calls had been made from the governor’s residence; strings pulled. Leticia and Narov had been airlifted out of there direct to the UK, on a private jet equipped with state-of-the-art medical facilities.

The Biowell Clinic was an exclusive private hospital. Patients tended to have few questions asked of them, which was convenient when you had two young women suffering from Kolokol-1 poisoning, and one peppered with fragments of shrapnel.

When the grenade had exploded a scattering of steel splinters had struck Narov, piercing her suit, hence the Kolokol-1 poisoning. But the long ride in the RIB and the fresh sea air had helped to blow the worst of the toxins away.

Jaeger found Narov in her hospital room, propped against a pile of spotless pillows. Sunlight streamed in through the partially open window.

All things considered, she was looking remarkably well. A little pinched and pale, perhaps. Heavy rings around the eyes. She still sported the odd bandage where the shrapnel had hit her. But just three weeks after the attack, she was well on the road to recovery.

Jaeger took the seat beside her bed. Narov didn’t say anything.

‘How are you feeling?’ he prompted.

She didn’t so much as glance at him. ‘Alive.’

‘Gives a lot away,’ Jaeger grumbled.

‘Okay, how is this? My head hurts, I’m bored shitless, and I’m desperate to get out of here.’

In spite of himself, Jaeger had to smile. It never ceased to amaze him how exasperating this woman could be. Her flat, expressionless, overly formal tones lent her words just a hint of menace, yet there was no doubting her self-sacrifice or her bravery. By diving on that body and smothering the grenade, she had saved the lot of them. They owed Narov their lives,

And Jaeger didn’t like being so in debt to someone who was such an enigma.