Burning Angels (41 page)

He glanced around at his team, his gaze burning with an impossible excitement. ‘We already have it. The cure. Or the source of the cure.’

Brows furrowed. What the hell was Jaeger talking about?

‘The kid. The slum kid. Simon Chucks Bello. He survived. He survived because Kammler’s people inoculated him.
He’s immune.
He has that immunity in his blood. We have the kid, or rather Dale does. Through him we can isolate the source of the immunity. Culture it. Mass-produce it.
The kid is the answer.
’

As he saw the realisation – the blinding flash of understanding – firing off in the eyes of his team, Jaeger
felt a new-found burst of energy burning through his system.

He locked eyes with Miles. ‘We need to get the Wildcat airborne again. Contact Dale. Get him to move the kid somewhere we can fly in and pick them up. Get them away from any crowded beaches, on to a stretch of easily accessible sand.’

‘Understood. You’ll be bringing them back here directly, I take it?’

‘We will. But tell them to stay under cover, in case Kammler’s watching. He’s been one step ahead of us all the way. We can’t allow him to be this time.’

‘I’ll launch both Taranis. Get them orbiting over Dale’s location. That way you’ll have cover.’

‘Do that. Radio us their pickup coordinates once you have them. Just give us a distance due north or south along the beach from Amani itself, and we’ll know where to put down. Tell Dale not to show himself until he can see the whites of our eyes.’

‘Understood. Leave it to me.’

Jaeger led his team in a rush for the Airlander’s hold. He grabbed the Wildcat’s pilot. ‘We need you to turn your ship around. Make for an area called Ras Kutani. Should be pretty much due west of here. We’re going to do a pickup from a resort called Amani Beach.’

‘Give me five,’ the pilot replied, ‘and we’re good to go.’

86

The three Nissan Patrol 4x4s tore southwards, their massive tyres juddering like machine guns as they ripped across the ridged surface of the rough, unmade dirt road. Behind them they threw up a huge plume of dust, which would be visible from miles around – that was if anyone was watching.

In the passenger seat of the lead vehicle sat the hulking form of Steve Jones, his shaven head gleaming in the early-morning light. He felt his cell phone vibrate. They were barely thirty kilometres out from the airport, and thankfully they still had a good mobile signal.

‘Jones.’

‘You’re how long to Amani?’ a voice demanded. Kammler.

‘Twenty minutes, at the most.’

‘Too long,’ he snapped. ‘It can’t wait.’

‘What can’t wait?’

‘I’ve got a Reaper drone overhead, and it’s picked up a Wildcat chopper inbound. Fast. Maybe five minutes out. It might be nothing, but I can’t risk it.’

‘What’re you suggesting?’

‘I’m going to hit the resort. Amani. And I’ll earmark a first Hellfire for the Wildcat.’

Steve Jones paused for an instant. Even he was shocked by what he’d just heard. ‘But we’re almost there. Fifteen minutes if we really push it. Just hit the helo.’

‘Can’t risk it.’

‘But you can’t just take out a beach resort. It’ll be full of tourists.’

‘I’m not seeking your advice,’ Kammler snarled. ‘I’m warning you what’s about to happen.’

‘You’ll bring seven tons of shit down on our heads.’

‘Then get in and out fast. Kill the kid and anyone who gets in your way. This is Africa, remember. And in Africa the cavalry takes a long time to arrive, if ever. Do it right and you’ll get your biggest ever payday. Do it wrong, and I’ll deal with it by Reaper alone.’

The call went dead. Jones glanced around, somewhat apprehensively. He was starting to get the sense that he was working for some kind of power-crazed lunatic. Deputy director of the CIA or not, Kammler was a law unto himself.

But the money was good. Too good to complain.

He’d never earned so much for doing so little. Plus Kammler had offered him a double-pay bonus on proof of death; proof that the kid had been terminated.

Jones was determined to earn it all.

Anyway, Kammler was probably right. Who was going to rush to investigate, this far out in the African bush? By the time anyone bothered, he and his crew would be long gone.

He turned to his driver. ‘That was the boss. Get a move on. We need to be there like bastard yesterday.’

The driver floored the accelerator. The needle crept up to 60 m.p.h. The big Nissan felt as if it were about to tear itself apart on the uneven surface of the dirt road.

Jones didn’t give a damn. It wasn’t his problem.

They were hire vehicles.

87

Kicking up a wind-whipped plume of ocean spray, the Wildcat put down on the damp sand. The tide was receding, and the beach was at its firmest where it was soaked with water.

The pilot kept the rotors turning as Jaeger, Narov, Raff, James, Kamishi and Alonzo piled off. They’d landed amongst the most stunning of landscapes. Dale had led the kid south, until they’d rounded a rocky headland taking them out of sight of Amani resort itself. Here, the low cliffs dropped abruptly into the sea, the red rock being cut into a series of dramatic wave-sculpted forms.

They fanned out into defensive positions, taking cover behind the rocky outcrops. Jaeger dashed forward. A figure came running out to meet him. It was Dale, and beside him was the distinctive form of the kid.

Simon Chucks Bello: the most wanted person in the world right now.

After a few days at Amani, the kid’s hair looked even wilder, stiffened by exposure to salt, sand and sun. He was wearing faded shorts that were two sizes too big for him, plus a pair of shades that Jaeger figured he’d borrowed off Dale.

Simon Chucks Bello was one cool dude. And he didn’t have a clue how important he was to all of humankind right now.

Jaeger was about to scoop him up and run him the fifty metres to the waiting chopper, when a chill froze him to the bone. With zero warning, something tore apart the mist of sea spray swirling above the Wildcat’s rotors, the scream of its descent ripping into Jaeger’s consciousness.

The missile ploughed into the roof of the Wildcat, ripping open the thin skin like a tin-opener. It detonated in a blinding flash, a storm of red-hot shrapnel slicing through the helo’s hold and piercing the twin fuel tanks. They ignited, punching a dragon’s breath of fiery death through the disintegrating fuselage.

Jaeger stared, transfixed, as the plume of destruction tore upwards and outwards, the noise of its eruption pounding into his ears and echoing back and forth across the seashore.

It was all over in less than a second.

He’d called in enough Hellfire strikes to recognise the high-pitched, tortured wolf-howl of the missile. He and his team – and Simon Chucks Bello
–
were the target of one right now, which meant there had to be a Reaper overhead.

‘HELLFIRE!’ he screamed. ‘Get back! Get under the trees!’

He dived into some thick vegetation, dragging the kid and Dale with him. Unsurprisingly, Simon Chucks Bello was wide-eyed and frozen with fear, his pupils dilated to an impossible size.

‘Keep hold of the kid!’ Jaeger yelled at Dale. ‘Calm him. And whatever you do,
do not lose him
.’

He rolled on to his back and delved into his combats, pulling out his compact Thuraya satphone and punching speed-dial for the Airlander. Miles answered almost immediately.

‘The helo’s been hit! There must be a Reaper above us.’

‘We’re on it. We have the Taranis involved in a nasty little dogfight with a Reaper right now.’

‘Win it, or we’re toast.’

‘Understood. Plus get this. We’ve detected three 4x4s making for the resort. They’re moving fast, maybe five minutes out from the front gate. I don’t believe they’re coming with any good intentions.’

Shit.
Kammler must have deployed a ground force, as well as drones. It made sense for him to have done so. He was too careful to leave the kid to an unverified Reaper strike from ten thousand feet.

‘Once we kill his drones, we can get the Taranis to deal with the road convoy,’ Miles continued. ‘But they’ll likely be in amongst you by then.’

‘Right, there’s a bunch of boats along the beach, at the jetty,’ Jaeger told him. ‘I’m gonna grab one and bring the kid out that way. Can you get the Airlander down for a pickup at sea?’

‘One moment, I’m passing you across to the pilot.’

Jaeger spoke a few words to the Airlander’s pilot. Pickup plan sorted, he prepared to move.

‘On me!’ he yelled into his radio. ‘All, on me!’

One by one his team gathered. Having taken good cover, all had survived the Hellfire strike.

‘Okay, let’s move it – and fast.’

With that, Jaeger started sprinting down the beach, his team right on his heels. They knew better than to ask for any kind of an explanation.

‘Keep the kid in the centre of us!’ Jaeger yelled over his shoulder. ‘Shield him from fire. The kid is all that matters!’

88

A short burst of machine-gun fire echoed out of the resort, a few hundred yards along the beach. Amani had guards, and maybe they’d tried to put up some form of resistance. But somehow Jaeger doubted it.

The shots were most likely Kammler’s force shooting their way in.

Jaeger shoved Dale and the kid aboard the RIB. It was a big, sleek ocean-going craft, and he prayed the thing was fuelled and good to go.

‘Spark up the engine,’ he yelled at Dale.

He ran his eye along the smart-looking wooden pier. There were maybe a dozen boats that could conceivably give chase. Too many to disable, and especially with Kammler’s ground force closing in.

He was about to order his team to break from their defensive positions when the first figures came dashing on to the open sand. Jaeger counted six, with more arriving by the second.

They scanned the beach with their weapons, but Raff, Alonzo, James and Kamishi were quicker. Their MP7s barked, and two of the distant figures crumpled. The first savage return of fire came cutting in. The beach spat vicious gouts of sand, the long eruption ending in the water at Jaeger’s feet.

Narov dashed across to him, dodging fire as she went.

‘Move it!’ she yelled. ‘Go, go, go! We’ll hold them off. GO!’

For an instant, Jaeger wavered. This went against all his instincts and training. You never left a guy behind. These were his team. His crew. He couldn’t just abandon them.

‘GET MOVING!’ Narov screamed. ‘SAVE THE KID!’

Without a word, Jaeger forced himself to turn away from his team. At his signal, Dale gave a quick burst of power and the craft tore away from the pier, a storm of bullets chasing after it.

Jaeger searched for Narov. She was sprinting down the length of the pier, unleashing rounds from her MP7 into the engines of the tethered craft. She was trying to ensure that Kammler’s gunmen had no vessel in which to mount a pursuit, but in doing so she was exposing herself to a murderous amount of fire.

As the RIB rounded the end of the pier, she made a final dash and a leap. For the briefest of moments she sailed through the air, her arms reaching for the speeding craft, and then she hit the water.

Jaeger reached over, grabbed her by the scruff of her shirt and, with powerful arms, hauled her sodden form aboard. She lay in the bottom of the RIB, fighting for breath and choking out seawater.

The RIB approached the first reef. Already it was well out of range of any accurate fire. Jaeger helped Dale lift the heavy outboard engine and tilt it forward, so it was free of the water. The hull bumped over the shallows, where there was a narrow gap in the coral, and then they glided out into the open sea beyond.

Dale went to full throttle, and the boat powered away from the dark, smoke-enshrouded beach, leaving the burning wreckage of the Wildcat, plus the dead aircrew, behind her. Yet Jaeger remained painfully aware that most of his crew was trapped on that beach, embroiled in the fight of their lives.

Narov glanced at him. ‘I always hated beach holidays,’ she yelled over the noise of the engine. ‘The kid’s alive. Focus on that. Not your team.’

Jaeger nodded. Narov seemed able to read his mind, always. He wasn’t sure he liked that.

He searched out Simon Chucks Bello. The boy was crouched in the lowest point of the RIB, eyes wide with fear. He seemed a lot less cool now. More like the orphan kid he really was. In fact, he looked distinctly ashen-faced. Jaeger didn’t doubt this was the first time this kid from the ghetto had ever been in a boat, let alone experienced a full-on firefight.

All things considered, he was bearing up remarkably well. Jaeger was reminded of Falk Konig’s words:
they build them tough in those slums.

They sure did.

Jaeger wondered where Konig was now, and where his allegiances ultimately lay. They say blood is thicker than water, but he still figured that Falk was on the side of the angels. Even so, he couldn’t exactly bank humanity’s future on it.

He turned to Narov, jabbing a finger in the kid’s direction. ‘Keep him company. Calm him down. I’ll sort the RV.’

He pulled out his Thuraya, punching speed-dial. A flood of relief washed over him as he heard the calm tones of Peter Miles.

‘I’m on a RIB with the kid,’ Jaeger yelled. ‘We’re moving due east at thirty knots. D’you see us?’

‘I have you visual via the Taranis. And you’ll be happy to hear the Reaper drones are no more.’

‘Nice one! Give me a grid to head for, for the pickup.’

Miles gave him a set of GPS coordinates some thirty kilometres out from the coast, well into international waters. With the Airlander needing to descend from ten thousand feet to sea level, it was also the closest practicable interception point.

‘Half my team is on the beach fighting a rearguard action. Can you get the drones over them to mallet Kammler’s guys?’

‘There’s only one Taranis remaining, plus it’s all out of missiles. Gone in the dogfight. But it can fly low-level runs at Mach 1, burning up the sand.’