The Hunt

76

That one word – GUNNERSIDE – winged its way across the ether, bouncing from satellite to satellite, en route to Daniel Brooks. Wherever he might be, he’d assured Jaeger that upon receipt of the code word, the tungsten device would be detonated within ninety seconds, and probably sooner.

It was time to get into some good cover.

Jaeger led his team in a dash for the eastern side of the turbine hall, and they took up position in the shadow of its massive wall. They now had that building plus the desalination plant between them and the coming blast.

They crouched and waited.

There was one other crucial piece of intel that Hing had revealed: though the entrance to Kammler’s headquarters and nerve centre was heavily defended, there was another way in. Concealed in a mass of dense scrub was a ‘window set in ground’, as Hing had described it.

In other words, a skylight, one that opened directly into Kammler’s bunker.

The plan they’d settled upon required Alonzo to advance to the front entrance. From cover he would lob in a few 40mm grenades, in the full knowledge that they would have very little effect on the bunker’s heavy steel door. He would then unleash continued bursts, using as many remaining magazines as they could muster.

That should give the impression that the team were preparing to fight their way in via a full-frontal assault. Kammler’s gunmen should gather at the entrance, waiting for the attackers to show themselves and to pick them off, one by one.

Which should leave Raff, Jaeger and Narov free to make for the skylight, with Hing acting as their guide.

Assuming they could locate it – and Jaeger hated assuming anything – they’d drop through and take Kammler by surprise. From there they would fan out and clear the rest of the complex from the inside, from where it would be as vulnerable as any regular building.

There was one other refinement that Raff had suggested. The subterranean complex had its own backup electricity supply, provided by a generator positioned in a separate building. Before going in, they’d disable that, plunging the bunker into confusion and darkness.

It was a decent enough plan under the circumstances. It had flaws, but at this stage, with such limited resources and time, it was the best they could muster.

Of course, somewhere within the scheme of things were Ruth and Peter Miles – if they were still alive. But they’d cross that bridge when they came to it.

Jaeger’s Thuraya buzzed. He glanced at the screen. One word: LURGAN.

When the Operation Gunnerside commandos had gone in to sabotage Hitler’s nuclear programme, the cipher they had adopted for the target was Lurgan. That was the agreed code word now, signalling thirty seconds to detonation.

Jaeger yelled out a warning to his team. The roaring from the ruptured pipelines high above had lessened, as the feeder lake was mostly drained of its water, but it was still loud in their ears.

He turned to Hing, showing him how to keep his mouth open to ensure the coming blast didn’t damage his eardrums.

In his head Jaeger was counting down the seconds now: ten, nine eight… He mouthed a quick prayer: Please, God, make that device still operational.

Four, three, two…